cannot create primary public folder exchange 2013

Question

hi we had to restore the exchange server from backup and have also installed latest CU 20 and now we cannot create any primary public folder mailbox.
Any public folder we create is marked secondary. no primary listed. also the secondary. cannot be deleted because it says no primary public folder mailbox

when I run "Get-OrganizationConfig | fl RootPublicFolderMailbox"
Here is the output : RootPublicFolderMailbox : 1027195f-8bd2-46ea-a259-b0052b35029b

How to fix this one?

Answer 1

Hi @dirkdigs ,

It looks like the master public folder information is still available.
Run Get-Mailbox –PublicFolder | FL Name,ExchangeGuid to get the PF which holders the master.

If this information is not retrieved, then you need to clean-up using ADSIEdit.msc

Open adsi.edit and go to Configuration – Services – Microsoft Exchange – “Your Exchange Org Name”, clear “MsExchDefaultPublicFolderMailbox” and create PF mailbox again, see if it holds primary hierarchy.

https://mspcontrol.org/wiki/how-to-re-create-public-folder-master-hierarchy-in-exchange-2013-2016/

To restore the data, you can follow the below steps,

1.Restore the database to a Recovery database from the backup.
2.Merge the public folder data to a new folder in the public folder mailbox.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/recovering-public-folder-information-in-exchange-2013-part-2/ba-p/590772