Finding a Public Folder by Email Address

Public folders can be complex and difficult to manage at times. Recently, a colleague identified a public folder in the global address list that was misdirecting his user support questions. The public folder in question was named “Help Desk”. Working for a University there are multiple help desks and IT departments. The name “Help Desk” was confusing to users and causing misdirected support questions. He tried using his Exchange 2003 tools, the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in, and the PFDAVAdmin tool without finding the public folder in question. Finally, out of frustration, he asked for my help to find the public folder.

Once again PowerShell came to the rescue. Very quickly I was able to find the folder using its email address from the GAL and give him the public folder path he needed to make the necessary changes. Here is how you can do it:

First I set the PowerShell scope to view our entire forest (we have many domains and multiple Exchange administrative groups). This is done by changing the properties of the $AdminSessionADSettings variable. Evan Dodds has a good blog post about $AdminSessionADSettings.

$AdminSessionADSettings.ViewEntireForest = $True


Next I used the Get-MailPublicFolder cmdlet to identify the public folder in question:

Get-MailPublicFolder helpdesk@sub.domain.com


I was able to identify the public folder but I still didn’t know the public folder path so that my colleague could make the necessary changes. I found this by piping the results from my previous command to the Get-PublicFolder cmdlet.

Get-MailPublicFolder helpdesk@sub.domain.com | Get-PublicFolder


Now I could use the ‘ParentPath’ attribute to find the public folder path so that he could make the necessary changes.

[PS] C:\>$AdminSessionADSettings.ViewEntireForest = $True
[PS] C:\>$HelpDeskPF = (Get-MailPublicFolder helpdesk@sub.domain.com | Get-PublicFolder)
[PS] C:\>$HelpDeskPF.ParentPath
\Business College\Resources\Resumes


The help desk folder was located within the 'Resumes' folder??? No wonder he couldn't find it.

--Nick