Public Folder Age Limits May Have Unexpected Effects on System Folders (821744)

MORE INFORMATION

You set age limits on a public folder store to define how long items can remain in the public folder store before they are automatically deleted. To configure age limits for the public folder store:

1. Start Exchange System Manager.
2. Double-click Administrative Groups or OrganizationName (as appropriate), double-click Servers, double-click ServerName, double-click StorageGroup, right-click Public Folder Store, click Properties, and then click the Limits tab.
3. Set the age limit that you want, and then click OK.

The following list describes how system folders may be affected when you set age limits to the public folder store in Exchange 2000. This list contains information about recovery considerations that apply when contents of the system folders are deleted as a result of the age limits:

• EFORMS REGISTRY
  
  Organizational forms are lost if they are not modified before the age interval takes effect. The only method that you can use to recover organizational forms is to restore the public folder database from a backup.
• Events Root
  
  Event sinks in the Events root folder are lost if they are not modified before the age interval takes effect. The only method that you can use to recover organizational forms is to restore the public folder database from a backup.
• NNTP Control Folder
  
  The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) control folder contains control messages. The control messages in this folder are lost if they are not modified before the age interval takes effect. The only method that you can use to recover organizational forms is to restore the public folder database from a backup.
  
  Control messages are messages that cause alterations to a newsgroup, such as when you delete a post. Messages that are stored in the control folder are messages that are received by the server and are archived so that they can be rebroadcast for an outgoing newsgroup feed. If the server does not have any outgoing feeds, problems may not occur if items in the control folder are lost. If the server does have outgoing feeds, servers that receive those feeds may experience problems related to the missing control messages. However, the sending server typically does not experience any problems.
• OFFLINE ADDRESS BOOK
  
  The offline Address Book is re-created according to the schedule that is configured in Exchange System Manager. Configure the schedule so that the updates to the offline Address Book occur more frequently than the public folder age limit expiration.
• OWAScratchPad
  
  The OWAScratchPad folder temporarily stores posts that contain attachments that are created by Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA). When the post is committed, it is moved to the original public folder. The OWAScratchPad folder contains little or no significant data. Because the data contained in this folder is current, age limit settings have little or no effect on this folder.
• SCHEDULE+ FREE BUSY
  
  You may find that the messages may be deleted. New messages are uploaded to Microsoft Outlook each time a user modifies their Calendar. Typically, new versions of the message are uploaded two or three times a day. As a result, the only items that may be deleted are those Calendar items that a user does not use frequently. To configure free-and-busy options, click Options on the Tools menu, click the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options, and then click Free/Busy Options. Typically, Outlook publishes three months of free-and-busy data. If the age limit that is set on the folder is over three months, the deletion of these items does not adversely affect the user because this data is no longer significant. To keep free-and-busy data current, the user must modify their Calendar periodically.
• schema-root
  
  The items in this folder are lost if they are not modified before the age interval takes effect. The only method that you can use to recover organizational forms is to restore the public folder database from a backup.
  
  The global schema folder for the public information store is created by EXOLEDB and contains XML definitions for all types of content classes and property definitions that are supported by the Exchange Web store. If this folder is or its contents are deleted or missing, typical server operations are not adversely affected. However, code and scripts that access the World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol Propfind method when it is used with the Allprop XML element do not return all the properties for the contact item content class.