Error Renaming System Public Folders in Exchange 2010 and 2016 coexistence

Question

We've read over the Microsoft document on migrating public folders from Exchange 2010 to 2016. I've downloaded the scripts and am stuck at the part where I need to rename existing public folders with forward slashes. I was successful in deleting one of the six system public folders that came up, but am unable to rename or delete the remaining five. When I try or rename them I get an error about the correct identity and whether I have the necessary permissions. The typical error I receive is below:

Cannot save the object '\NON_IPM_SUBTREE\SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY\EX:/o=/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDI
BOHF23SPDLT)'. Make sure that you specified the correct Identity and that you have the necessary permissions to save it
.

• CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (0:Int32) [Set-PublicFolder], MapiOperationException
• FullyQualifiedErrorId : 716F7815,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.MapiTasks.SetPublicFolder
  I am using a user that has all the necessary permissions and have searched but haven't found anything specific to this issue.

As far as I'm aware these 6 system public folders are not needed in Exchange 2010 or 2016, they are for Offline Address Book and Schedule+ Free Busy.
We've migrated all the users over to 2016, i've tried migrating my account back 2010 in order to delete or rename these system public folders.
Other discussions seem to have ended in removing the public folder altogether but have quite a bit of user data we need to migrate.
I've run a migration batch on the public folders and it completes with errors, it doesn't give me a clear indication as to what has failed so I'm a little reluctant to complete the batch in the hope that all the users data is okay.

Any suggestions on what i can do to be able to remove the offending 5 public folders?

Answer 1

Hi @Stephen Pratt ,

A question is that why you want to migrate the system public folders to Exchange 2016......? AFAIK these public folders were used for some functions like OAB, FB, etc. not like normal public folders.
I think you don't have to migrate these system public folders if they don't store any user information.

See if this thread could help: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/679117da-73f9-4a18-8830-505aef7055ab/exchange-2010-2016-migration-public-folders-question?forum=Exch2016SD

Best regards,
Lou

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Answer 2

Hi Lou @Xzsssss ,

The article suggested to run the commands i've already tried to run to unsuccessfully. I was hoping someone else would suggest something different but as that's not happened i'm just going to complete the migration and ignore the errors. I'm assuming the errors are to do with the illegal characters and that all the user folders have been synced successfully.

Regards
Stephen

Answer 3

Hi @Stephen Pratt ,

I tried to rename the system public folder and got the same result:

And as I said, you don't have to migrate these system pf mailboxes to Exchange 2016.

You could follow these steps to migrate the public folders:

1. Downloading scripts from Microsoft
2. Preparing the organization for public folder migration
3. Generating CSV files using the Microsoft scripts
4. Creating public folder mailboxes in Exchange 2016 databases
5. Starting the migration, and waiting for initial synchronization to complete
6. Locking the public folders for final migration (this requires an outage, usually of at least an hour, but longer for very large environments)
7. Finalize the public folder migration
8. Testing modern public folders, and then unlocking them for access by users

To remove the public folders, you could delete the public folder database after the migration, Remove Public Folder Databases

Hope this could help, if you have other questions, please feel free to post.

Best regards,
Lou