Pubic folder is one feature within Microsoft Exchange, just as its name “Public” it gives Outlook users access to shared information (although it is not specifically designed for sharing and collaboration as it does not support versioning). Lately, based on rapid development on Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft wants more people to drift to Office 365 group and Shared mailboxes in Office 365 as means of Information sharing and collaboration, but Public folder has some rich feature which makes users to always look back to it.
Public Folders support the following features:
Contacts
Calendar Items
Messages
Journal Entries
Notes
Custom Attributes
Templates
I will be discussing “Contacts” features of Public Folder. Here goes the 1 Million dollars question!
why would someone want to use “Public Folder Contact” ?
I have just one scenario in my head now
I am that Entrepreneur that has few users and I have a personal contacts that I want to share with my staffs and I also want them to create a new contacts items so we can maintain one single directory of all contacts.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
In this guide, I will assume you have never used a Public folder and I will start by creating a Public Folder Mailbox.
Before you can create a public folder, you must first create a public folder mailbox. Public folder mailboxes contain the hierarchy information plus the content for public folders.
- Logon to Office 365 Admin portal
- Click on “Exchange”
- Navigate to Public folders > Public folder mailboxes, and then click +
- In Public Folder Mailbox, provide a name for the public folder mailbox.
- Click Save.
Having created the Public folder mailboxes, we can now proceed the create Public folder
- Click on Public folder, and then click +
- Provide a name of the Public folder
- Click Save.
Select the public folder created and click on “manage” to give full permission to yourself or any other user, then save
You can also make the Public Folder email enabled, but am not discussing the messages feature here.
You might need to wait for about 24 hours for the public folder to provision and start showing on Outlook
- Launch Outlook Client
- Click the ellipsis at the bottom of the left-hand navigation panel.
- Click Folder to go to the Outlook Folder View
- Navigate down to the public folder you created on Exchange Admin portal, in this example, mine is “mainone”
- Right click on the public folder “mainone” click on “New Folder”
- Name the new folder. In this example, the new folder is called “General Contact”.
- Select “Contact Items” in the drop-down menu under Folder Contains.
- Select where to place the folder. In this example, the folder will be placed in “mainone”.
- Give the folder a name and make sure the “Folder Contains” option is “Contact Items”, click ok
- Right click on the Contact folder created, go to properties to set few options
- Click on the “Outlook Address Book” tab and check the “show this folder as an email address book” checkbox to ensure that the Address book is searchable on the Address list
Click on the “Permission” tab to set permission
As you can see in the screenshot below by “Default” everyone has “Author” permission which enable them to see the contact, “Create” new contact and edit “own” contacts, they will not be able to “Delete” contact
You can promote any user to “Owner” or create different permission level as necessary.
One of my user “Carlos Slim” has “Owner” permission, the user will be able to “Delete” and modify other users contacts
Bravo!!! The Public Folder contact is ready for use, users can start creating contacts or you can copy/cut contacts from an existing personal contact to the Public Folder contact.
Basically most people are not aware that one can copy/cut contacts, You can use your normal Ctrl+A to “Select All”, Ctrl+X or Ctrl+C as the case may be and Ctrl+V to your Public Folder contact.
More better alternative is to make use of the “Move” option in the contextual menu to the Public Folder contact
Outlook might become unresponsive during the period you paste, just wait for a while, No cause for Alarm!
If you have a queries, you drop it on the comment section or ping me olusola@exabyte.com.ng
