An Outlook client may be directed to a public folder store that is in the same administrative group in a different routing group in Exchange 2003

Consider the following scenario. In a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 environment that has multiple administrative groups and multiple routing groups, a mailbox store points to a different server for its default public folder store. Additionally, the public folder server cannot be contacted because of a network problem or because the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service is not running. In this scenario, when a user logs on to his or her mailbox, the Microsoft Office Outlook client tries to connect to the default public folder server. However, the connection is unsuccessful. The Outlook client will then request an alternative public folder server from the mailbox server. The mailbox server will point the Outlook client to a different public folder store that is in the same administrative group as the default public folder store. This process does not handle the routing group referral functionality as a condition.

The Outlook client may be directed to a public folder store that is in the same administrative group in different routing group. This behavior occurs even if the public folder referral to a routing group functionality is disabled.

This behavior is by design.

You can either enable or disable the public folder referral functionality in the setting of the connector between routing groups.

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