Errors after removing an Exchange public folder server that the siteFolderServer has been deleted

I noticed some event log errors after removing an Exchange 2007 Public Folder server from our Exchange environment. An EXBPA scan contained a warning that SiteFolderServer had been deleted. This didn’t seem to be causing any user issues that we were aware of so it was essentially more of a cleanup iten after removing older Exchange servers from the environment

The site-wide public folder database for administrative group ‘Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)  has been deleted. Current public folder store: ‘CN=PFDatabase\0ADEL:c21rlk7c-92g4-6gws-g5th-hm28em098w89,CN=Deleted Objects,CN=Configuration,DC=domain,DC=com’

In order to resolve this you will need to modify the SiteFolderServer attribute for your administrative group:

CN=Configuration,DC=Domain,DC=com, CN=Services, CN=Microsoft Exchange, CN=OrgName, CN=Administrative Groups, CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT), CN=Databases

Locate a PF database that will remain in your environment and right click it, then go to properties. Locate the distinguished name of this public folder, edit it and copy it to a text file. Once completed go to the following:

CN=Configuration,CN=domain,CN=com, CN=Services, CN=Microsoft Exchange, CN=OrgName, CN=Administrative Groups

Right click the administrative group, go to properties, and find siteFolderServer. Click edit and paste the Public folder DN that we pastwer into the notepad file earlier. Click OK, then OK again on the Admin Group properties. Re-running an EXBPA scan should no longer show this as an issue.

 

 

 

4 Responses to Errors after removing an Exchange public folder server that the siteFolderServer has been deleted

  1. San says:

    Wollaa!!. this fixed it

    Thanks for the guide

  2. Uwe says:

    The article is ok when there is at least one public-folder in the 2010 environment. But we have no public-folder in our environment.

    Should we delete the attribute entry?

    Regards
    Uwe

    • JA says:

      We ended up modifying the sitefolderserver attribute to resolve persistent errors that were showing up in our event logs. I’m not sure you would want to delete the entry entirely though. There could be resources in your environment that still reference this value, for instance if you have older Outlook clients in the environment and still have “Enable public folder distribution” enabled to accommodate those clients.

      I’m in the process of removing our public folders. I will check back in with additional info when they’re fully removed.

  3. Luke Brynycz says:

    Fantastic. This resolved the single error I had when migrating from a 2008 to 2011 SBS Server. I had forced replication from the old public folders and all instances were across, but it just wouldn’t let me uninstall Exchange as it thought otherwise. I had to run adsiedit.msc on the 2008 to forcibly remove PF, hence the error.

    Cheers!

Leave a Reply to San Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *