Create a public folder in Exchange Online

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.

By default, a public folder inherits the settings of its parent folder, including the permissions settings.

Note

For more information about the storage quotas and limits for public folders in Exchange Online, see Exchange Online Limits.

What do you need to know before you begin?

• Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes.

• 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 Feature permissions in Exchange Online topic.

• You can't create a public folder unless you've first created a public folder mailbox. For more information about how to create a public folder mailbox, see Create a public folder mailbox.

• 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 create a public folder

When using the EAC to create a public folder, you'll only be able to set the name and the path of the public folder. To configure additional settings, you'll need to edit the public folder after it's created.

1. Go to Public folders > Public folders.

2. If you want to create this public folder as a child of an existing public folder, open the existing public folder in the list view. If you want to create a top-level public folder, skip this step.

3. Click Add a public folder.

4. Provide a Name for the public folder.

   Important

   Don't use a backslash ( \ ) in the name when creating a public folder.

5. In the Path box, verify the path to the public folder. If this isn't the desired path, click Close and follow Step 2 of this procedure.

6. Click Add.

Use Exchange Online PowerShell to create a public folder

This example creates a public folder named Reports in the path Marketing\2013.

New-PublicFolder -Name Reports -Path \Marketing\2013

Important

Don't use a backslash (\) in the name when creating a public folder.

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-PublicFolder.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you've successfully created a public folder, do the following:

• In the EAC, click Refresh to refresh the list of public folders. Your new public folder should be displayed in the list.

• In Exchange Online PowerShell, run any of the following commands:

  Get-PublicFolder -Identity \Marketing\2013\Reports | Format-List
  

  Get-PublicFolder -Identity \Marketing\2013 -GetChildren
  

  Get-PublicFolder -Recurse