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Mail-enable or mail-disable a public folder in Exchange Online

  • Article

Public folders are designed for shared access and provide an easy and effective way to collect, organize, and share information with other people in your workgroup or organization. Mail-enabling a public folder allows users to post to the public folder by sending an email message to it. When a public folder is mail-enabled additional settings become available for the public folder in the Exchange admin center (EAC), such as email addresses and mail quotas. In Exchange Online PowerShell, before a public folder is mail-enabled, you use the Set-PublicFolder cmdlet to manage all of its settings. After the public folder is mail-enabled, you use the Set-PublicFolder and the Set-MailPublicFolder cmdlets to manage the settings.

If you want users on the internet to send mail to a mail-enabled public folder, you need to set addition permissions using the Add-PublicFolderClientPermission cmdlet.

For other management tasks related to public folders, see Public folder procedures in Microsoft 365 or Office 365 and Exchange Online.

What do you need to know before you begin?

  • Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

  • To ensure that users on the internet can send e-mail messages to a mail-enabled public folder, the public folder needs to have at least the CreateItems access right granted to the Anonymous account. If you want to learn how to do this, check out Allow anonymous users to send email to a mail-enabled public folder.

  • You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Public folders" entry in the topic.

  • For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard shortcuts for the Exchange admin center.

Use the EAC to mail-enable or mail-disable a public folder

  1. Navigate to Public folders > Public folders.

  2. In the list view, select the public folder that you want to mail-enable or mail-disable.

  3. In the details pane, under General, select or unselect the Mail-enabled checkbox.

  4. Click Save.

If you want external users to send mail to this public folder, make sure you follow the steps in Allow anonymous users to send email to a mail-enabled public folder.

Use Exchange Online PowerShell to mail-enable a public folder

This example mail-enables the public folder Help Desk.

Enable-MailPublicFolder -Identity "\Help Desk"

This example mail-enables the public folder Reports under the Marketing public folder, but hides the folder from address lists.

Enable-MailPublicFolder -Identity "\Marketing\Reports" -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled $True

If you want external users to send mail to this public folder, make sure you follow the steps in Allow anonymous users to send email to a mail-enabled public folder.

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Enable-MailPublicFolder.

Use Exchange Online PowerShell to mail-disable a public folder

This example mail-disables the public folder Marketing\Reports.

Disable-MailPublicFolder -Identity "\Marketing\Reports"

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Disable-MailPublicFolder.

Allow anonymous users to send email to a mail-enabled public folder

You can use either Outlook or Exchange Online PowerShell to set permissions on a public folder's Anonymous account. You can't use the EAC to set permissions on the Anonymous account.

Use Outlook to set permissions for the Anonymous account

  1. Open Microsoft Outlook using an account that is granted Owner permissions on the email-enabled public folder you want anonymous users to send mail to.

  2. Go to Public folders - <user's name>.

  3. Navigate to the public folder you want to change.

  4. Right-click on the public folder, click Properties, and then select the Permissions tab.

  5. Select the Anonymous account, select Create items under Write, and then click OK.

Use Exchange Online PowerShell to set permissions for the Anonymous account

This example sets the CreateItems permission for the Anonymous account on the "Customer Feedback" mail-enabled public folder.

Add-PublicFolderClientPermission "\Customer Feedback" -AccessRights CreateItems -User Anonymous

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Add-PublicFolderClientPermission.