Outlook 2010 looking for public folders

Question

Hi

We have a legacy Citrix environment running Windows 2008R2 and Office 2010 which needs to be kept in place for a short period. I know these are out of support but we don't have a choice in the short term.

We also have one Exchange 2010 & one 2016 server. All mailboxes have been moved to the 2016 server.

We would like to decommission the EX2010 server but are finding that the Outlook 2010 clients are still looking to the EX2010 server for public folders. We no longer need these and they have not been migrated to the 2016 server.

If we shut down the Exchange 2010 server then the Outlook clients tend to hang and/or not respond. If we check the connection status then it looks like they are trying to connect to the 2010 server for the public folders.

Strangely, if we leave the 2010 server up and running but just dismount the public folder database, the Outlook clients don't seem to hang although we obviously get an error when trying to open the public folders. We would be fine with this situation if it happened when shutting the server down.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get round this issue while we still need to use the Outlook 2010 clients ?

Thanks

Answer 1

Correct,you want to remove the folders themselves first and the database. that first link covers it.
https://practical365.com/remove-default-public-folder-database-exchange-mailbox-database

https://practical365.com/exchange-2010-remove-public-folder-database/

Once everything is removed, there is no going back really, but thats the only way to really make that clean break, otherwise you will always have them sitting around and you will need to deal with them at some point.

Answer 2

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

But that link takes me to an Outlook logon page and if I try my Microsoft credentials I just get page cannot be displayed ?

Answer 3

If you don't need the public folders, then remove them.
https://practical365.com/exchange-2010-remove-public-folder-database/

This talks about Exchange Online, but still applies for the on-prem removal

https://medium.com/365uc/decommissioning-on-premises-public-folders-post-exchange-online-migration-daf90b73285

https://practical365.com/remove-default-public-folder-database-exchange-mailbox-database/