Public Folder Migration Woes...

Happy Monday to everyone!

 

One of today's issues was trying to migrate public folders from one SBS server to another (separate domains).  The problem was that the public folders on the original server had custom permissions set and those permissions were preventing the public folders from being accessible on the new server once the PST file was imported (the public folders on the source server had been previously exported to PST in Outlook).  We had several choices, two of which were:  a) try to fix permissions on the top-level public folder and then force propogation down throughout the public folder tree or b) export/import with the CSV format.  What we did to workaround the issue was to export the PST to a CSV, then copy and import the CSV into the new public folder database on the new server. 

The pitfalls are:

1.  When exporting to a CSV, you lose ALL formatting/attachments and permissions (good thing in this example)

2.  You must still have access to the original server with an Outlook client.

3.  On the original server, you have to drag and drop the public folder to the a "mailbox" in Outlook (administrator in this case), then export the public folder (that is now in the private mailbox of the administrator) to a PST file, then copy the PST file to the new server (or client on the new network - with the administrator account) and then create the target public folder on the new server and THEN import the CSV into the public folder.