Exchange 2007 Public Folder Calendar and Management

No. Frankly it wasn't helpful because I have full admin rights to Exchange. I have Public Folder rights to Exchange. I am the administrator. So no, as usual it wasn't helpful.

Alright, let's get to fixing the issue of not being able to create a new public folder in Exchange 2007 even though you should apparently have rights to do so.

First things first - I'm assuming you have at least Exchange 2007 SP1 which is when they included the Public Folder management snap-in. If you don't - why not? Anyway, open up the Exchange Management Console --> Toolbox --> Public Folder Management Console. Expand Default Public Folders and click on that same folder. On the right hand column you'll see the option to create a New Public Folder.

Click it  and give the folder a name - then click next.

Now head on over to Outlook. Expand Public Folders and your new Test Folder should be there. Right click on the folder and select New Folder. Change the drop down to Calendar Items and give it a name. Click Ok when you're done.

Wait... did you get the same error as at the top of the post? I did. Here's why: If your domain is setup like mine you have a normal (mail enabled) user and an admin (not mail enabled) user account. When you created the Public Folder in the EMC it was most likely under the admin user account which now has owner permissions to the folder, but your lowly Outlook user account doesn't. That little issue will keep you from doing anything worthwhile on the folder.

Head back over to your Exchange box and open the Exchange Management Shell, then type in:

Get-PublicFolder "\Test Folder"| Add-PublicFolderClientPermission -User "domain\normaluser" -AccessRights Owner -whatIf

(NOTE: Remove the -whatIf at the end for the command to really take hold)

If all goes well you'll get something like this:

Identity               User                      AccessRights --------                   ----                       ------------ \Test Folder     normaluser...          {Owner}

Guess what? You can now go back to Outlook and not only create your Public Folder Calendar - but you can also add other user permissions to the folder/calendar.

Here's a slightly more handy command should you need to take ownership of multiple folders all at once:

Get-PublicFolder -recurse | Add-PublicFolderClientPermission -User "domain\normaluser" -AccessRights Owner -whatIf