Public Folders in Office 365

[Jesper Stein]

We have a large number of Public Folder (more than 5 TB) and we are currently running in a hybrid enviroment with Exchange 2010 on-prem and Office 365.

Now we need to come up with a strategy regarding the data currently in Public Folders

We have looked at groups, but since its only possible to have "one folder, no subfolders" in a Office 365 Group, this can not replace Public Folders with this.

Then the question is, is Public Folders hosted in Office 365 any good?

And what is the future for Public Folders in Office 365, since Microsoft for many years have been talking about "the death of public folders".

Any input on this would be great :)

[#2]

Hi Jesper, It might be worth starting here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200758(v=exchg.150).aspx Even the most recent FAQs indicate that Modern Public Folders are staying in Office 365.  In the longer term I'd certainly be keeping an eye on the wealth of collaboration options within Office 365. You may find alternatives for subsets of Public Folders in your organisation. Hope this gets you started!

[#3]

@Jesper Stein wrote:

We have looked at groups, but since its only possible to have "one folder, no subfolders" in a Office 365 Group, this can not replace Public Folders with this.

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Not sure to understand what you mean with "one folder, no subfoldes": can you please clarify?

Also, give a look to this article: https://www.petri.com/migrating-modern-public-folders-exchange-online

[#4]

Hi. What I ment with the "one inbox - no subfolders" was that our user typicially use a folder hierarki in Public Folders, when they want to move mails to subfolders. This can not be done with Groups.

[#5]

Thank you for the clarification.

While, behind the scenes, Group conversations are indeed implemented by a shared mailbox, the underlying shared mailbox features are not fully exposed.

This requirement has been discussed several times here, but it looks like Microsoft don't plan to implement it...

cc @Christophe Fiessinger

[#6]

Hi Jesper

While there has been a lot of talk about the death of Public Folders, Microsoft is still supporting them and currently isn't planning to deprecate them either. On the other hand Microsoft is actually still rolling out a few features for Public Folders on cloud. However, it is true that Office 365 Groups is being actively promoted as the modern collaboration tool and there are a slew of features lined up for it.

I understand that folder hierarchy is important in your setup but could you possibly try to migrate certain subfolders to Groups and see how that works out for you? Even though Groups doesn't support a folder hierarchy, it offers a much superior collaboration experience.

We have just started a Beta program to test out the migration of content from Public Folders to Groups and if you are interested I could sign you up for it.

[#7]

While there are several modern collaboration tools that are part of Office 365, I see a lot of use cases that work better in public folders. Given that MS seems to be continuing to support and invest in Public Folders, I would recommend that you continue to review other solutions depending on the use case (public folders are typically used for more than one use case) but there is no need to plan for a complete migration or elimination of public folders.

We have executed a hybrid and a migration for many organizations, some with large and business critical public folder infrastructres and cloud public folders continue to work and serve the needs of the organization.

[#8]

Just to add my two cents here. I'm currently working on a free eBook we will soon be releasing in an attempt to bring some more attention to the "what to do with my PFs" issue. Groups are definitely one of the hot topic discussed there. But despite what some folks at Microsoft are trying to tell you, Groups are not the answer for everything, especially when it comes to email-centric content. No subfolders as you've noted. No Rules either. No access to Sent Items, Deleted Items or even Junk (yes, you can have messages in groups marked as Junk and you dont have any way to access them). The list goes on and on.

Which is not to say that Groups cannot actually offer you BETTER alternative for PSs, ins SOME cases. Everything that involves document collaboration is no-brained - PFs simply suck at that. But the idea here is - put things into context, the specific scenario and the specific implementation for your organization. Dont just listed to marketing talk.

@Mohammad Sarosh I would've except you guys to have released this already!

[#9]

Hi @Vasil Michev

We understand that Groups cannot work for every scenario that PFs are used for. This is why we are encouraging customers to try out Groups and see if it works for them. The beta migration program does exactly that. However, if customers heavily use folders then Groups certainly won't be ideal for them.

Groups doesn't have feature parity with PFs yet but it is comparatively a much younger product and has a much more dedicated work force behind it. This isn't to say that Microsoft is going to kill PFs and there are certain scenarios for which PFs still works the best.

Looking forward to your ebook.

[#10]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to "defend" Public folders. They havent received any significant user-oriented update in what, 10 years now? There are definitely more suitable alternatives for almost every usage scenario for PFs nowadays, Groups included.

What I meant with my comment to you is that we've known about this "PF to Groups" migration program for a while now, and I was expecting for it to have been publicly released already. I know we cannot discuss the details here until it's released, so I'm hoping you indeed release it soon :)

[#11]

Did anything ever come of this tread?   I have the exact same issue and have been told that MS is pushing people to groups.  They don't work and you can't have subfolders..

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@Jesper Stein wrote:

We have a large number of Public Folder (more than 5 TB) and we are currently running in a hybrid enviroment with Exchange 2010 on-prem and Office 365.

Now we need to come up with a strategy regarding the data currently in Public Folders

We have looked at groups, but since its only possible to have "one folder, no subfolders" in a Office 365 Group, this can not replace Public Folders with this.

Then the question is, is Public Folders hosted in Office 365 any good?

And what is the future for Public Folders in Office 365, since Microsoft for many years have been talking about "the death of public folders".

Any input on this would be great :)

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[#12]

Hi Michael

We have released the Public Folders to Groups tool. The documentation can be found here https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2017/09/25/migrate-your-public-folders-to-office-365-gr...

If you feel that Office 365 Groups do not work for you, you could still continue to use Public Folders. We do not have anything on our roadmap to deprecate Public Folders.

[#13]

We decided to leave them on-prem for now. We will analyze our Public Folders and see what can be moved to Groups/Sharepoint etc.