XADM: How to Remove Corrupted Public Folder Views That Are Shared by Multiple Users

This article describes how to remove corrupted public folder views that multiple users share without deleting the view for all users.

When you create a public folder, you can set custom views. These views exist in the information store as associated messages for the public folder. The user who creates the shared view is the owner of that view. When a view becomes corrupted, you can run Microsoft Outlook with the /cleanviews switch to delete this view. If the owner of a shared view runs this switch, it removes that view for all users who share that view.

To run the /cleanviews switch and not delete that view for everyone, you must first remove permissions from the owner:

1.	From the Microsoft Exchange Server Administrator program, right-click the public folder where the view was created, click Properties, and then click Client Permissions.
2.	If this user is the only owner of the folder, add another user as the owner. NOTE: This step is temporary.
3.	After you grant ownership to another user, remove the original owner. Ensure that the user does not have permissions, which includes Group Membership.
4.	Verify that the user does not have ownership to any public folders where shared views have been created by that user.
5.	Run Outlook with the /cleanviews switch. IMPORTANT: It is critical to ensure that the user does not have permissions; if the user has permissions, any views that were created by this user are removed.
6.	After you run the /cleanviews switch, add the original user with ownership permissions.

For additional information about how to run command line switches for Outlook, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: