Public folders for Exchange are here to stay (a while)

With the release of Exchange 2007, the Microsoft Exchange team posted a statement in its blog that caused some panic: “We are ‘de-emphasizing’ public folders — which means that public folders may not be in our next major release after E12.”

That created a frenzy among some IT Exchange admins as they fretted over what they would do without those familiar, useful public folders. Further fueling those fears: Outlook 2007, unlike its predecessors, does not require public folders. This came off as another hint that Microsoft might be looking to force admins toward a new technology, SharePoint, before they’re ready for it. Some people have interpreted Microsoft’s message as,”Public folders are dead! Move to SharePoint now!”

Fear not! In a more recent post , the Exchange team offered some clarification that should come as a relief to IT admins that are looking for a break from all the changes: You don’t need to worry about today is lack of public folder support. They’ll be supported in the next release of Exchange and on for some ten years. Who knows what new options will be available by then for enterprise admins to use? So, the move is not essential now.

That being said, there may be situations where you might want to use SharePoint as opposed to public folders. For example, if you are establishing a new environment with Outlook 2007 clients and an Exchange 2007 infrastructure, you might consider Windows SharePoint Server (WSS), which I discussed last week. To its credit, WSS is free, plus it offers superior document-sharing capabilities compared to public folders. You also might look at Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS), which has a few extra hooks to work with your Outlook environment, as you can read here.

However, if you do decide to make the move from your existing public folder environment to SharePoint, you have some heavy issues to worry about. One of the largest among them is content migration. Several third-party tools are available to assist (for a fee); there’s also a free tool that Kimmo Forss has given to the community that you can locate here.

While making the move from public folders now can prepare you for the future, there’s certainly no harm in letting the dust settle a bit from all the new releases in the Windows enterprise space. In fact, I recommend sticking with what you know is working for you and your environment. Too much change all at once will wreak havoc on your users. However, on the side, you might want to start getting more familiar with SharePoint services and the concept of tools that mimic or support SharePoint.