Recovering Public Folder information in Exchange 2013, Part 2

@supcxc  : Please find the answers below

1. How can we restore a public folder in RDB to another new folder without affecting the production folder?

For example, folder_A is still using in production server, but I want to restore folder_A from a early db backup to another new folder folder_A_for_audit. I don't want the restored content to affect the production folder_A.

Answer : This will not work as the public folder restore process will succeed provided we have created folder with same name and not different name. The merge will succeed only if you try to merge data between public folder mailboxes and not between public folder mailbox and normal user mailbox.

#  For auditing purpose you can deploy a test environment where you can create the required set of the public folders whose data you wish to merge and then restore the database to recovery database and merge those specific folders.

2. Is there any way to browse and restore item-level content in a public folder in RDB so that we don't have to restore the whole folder?

Answer : No there is no way to browse or restore individual items in a public folder in RDB.

3. Is there any way to restore public folder in RDB to a normal mailbox or PST file?

Answer : No, if you try to merge the contents from a public folder mailbox to normal mailbox it will error out as  "cannot restore the content from public folder mailbox to a private mailbox"

Also you cannot use the New-MailboxExportRequest to export the data to the PST file. it will error out saying " 'Pf mailbox name' is a public folder mailbox and exporting to the PST file from a public folder mailbox is not allowed"

# It is still possible to use the outlook to extract the PST for the required public folder from the production public folder mailbox.

I hope the above clarifies your doubts!