XCCC: You Cannot See Public Folders When You Use OWA

If you are using Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) in Exchange 2000, you cannot see a link to public folders on the folders bar. However, if you are using Microsoft Outlook, you can see the public folders as expected. This behavior occurs in Exchange 2000 front-end server and back-end server scenarios.

This behavior occurs if the public folders are located on a Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 computer. If you are using OWA in Exchange 2000, you can only see public folders that are located on an Exchange 2000 computer. Outlook clients do not have this limitation. OWA in Exchange Server 5.5 cannot respond to Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) commands. Additionally, Exchange Server 5.5 does not include a Public virtual directory.

In a mixed environment, you can use OWA to view public folders on the Exchange 2000 computer, but you cannot view public folders in which the content is located on an Exchange Server 5.5 computer.

To work around this behavior if Exchange 2000 has a replica of the public folder, point the mailbox store to the Exchange 2000 computer for the public folder server.

This behavior is by design.

This behavior may also occur if you are trying to access a public folder on an Exchange 2000 computer if the content has not been replicated to an Exchange 2000 computer.