Public Folders Overview

Public folders are an easy and effective way to collect, organize, and share information with other people on your team. You can use public folders to share files or post information on an electronic bulletin board. Public folders can also be used to store items such as calendars and contacts that are shared by two or more people.

Stored on Exchange computers, public folders are created and designed by administrators and other people in your organization who have the appropriate access permissions. These access permissions determine who can view, create, and modify items in the folders. Anyone who uses your e-mail server can read and post to your server's public folders, and can read and post to public folders on other servers.

Note   Depending on the server where a particular public folder resides, you may be prompted for security credentials, such as a password, when you attempt to access that folder. For more information, see the Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server online documentation, or contact an administrator. Also, if you logged on only to look at public folders, you may have to supply valid logon credentials to gain access to your private Exchange folders, such as your Inbox.

To open a public folder:

1. To display your folders, on the Outlook Bar, click the Folders tab.
2. Beside Public Folders, click the addition sign [+] to expand the display of your organization's public folders. Click a [+] beside a folder to view additional folders nested within. When a folder has been expanded, the [+] becomes a [-].
3. To open the public folder, click it. The posted messages contained in that public folder will be displayed in the main Outlook Web Access window.