Troubleshooting Public Folder Deletion Issues in Exchange Online

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Public folders provide a way to collect, organize, and share information with other people in your organization. They can help users organize content in a deep hierarchy that’s easy to browse in Outlook and Outlook on the web (OWA).

This blog post is here to help admins troubleshoot deletion issues with public folders, with a focus on the following scenarios:

A user with sufficient permissions (for example, folder Owner) is unable to delete items within a public folder. After content is deleted using OWA or Outlook, it re-appears within a few seconds.
A user with sufficient permissions (for example, Exchange administrator) is unable to delete a public folder and its content using Outlook and is getting one of the following errors:
- Microsoft.Exchange.Data.StoreObjects.ObjectNotFoundException: Could not find public folder Dumpster for PF1
- Microsoft.Exchange.Data.StoreObjects.ObjectNotFoundException: The process failed to get the correct properties. —> Microsoft.Mapi.MapiExceptionNotFound: MapiExceptionNotFound: Unable to get properties on object

These issues can occur when the public folder dumpster is invalid or does not exist. The exact reason for this might not be known, but the issue typically happens after public folders are migrated from on-premises servers using PSTs or third-party migration tool.

What is the Dumpster Folder?

Today’s public folder storage model uses a visible “IPM_SUBTREE” part that contains public folders and their content, and a hidden area called the “NON_IPM_SUBTREE” that which contains dumpster folders and other system related folders.

Every content folder has a dumpster folder where deleted items are retained according to the defined retention time. Once the retention time has elapsed, the items are permanently purged.

Example:

As illustrated here, deletion of public folder content is really a content move from the visible folder to the dumpster:

Each folder and its dumpster are linked to each other. This link cannot be undone, and admins cannot delete dumpster folders by themselves. When a folder is removed from the public folder hierarchy, its dumpster is automatically removed. The same principle applies to mailbox folders and subfolders, too.

Addressing public folder/item deletion failures

A newly published PowerShell-based tool, ValidateEXOPFDumpster, can help you investigate public folders/items deletion failures. The tool validates the following:

Public folder size
- Public folder content mailbox TotalDeletedItemSize value has exceeded its RecoverableItemsQuota value
- Public folder size is full
User permissions are not synced between public folder mailboxes
Content public folder mailbox between the public folder and its dumpster are different
EntryId and DumpsterEntryID values are not mapped properly on the public folder and its dumpster
Parent public folder dumpster is unhealthy
The public folder is a dumpster folder
Dumpster folder has child folders
Mail-enabled public folder MEPfProxyGuid is “null”

How does the tool work?

Typically, the tool is run with a PFolder parameter specifying the public folder identity as follows:

.ValidateExoPfDumpster.ps1 -PFolder pf1

The tool will prompt for affected public folder identity/EntryID if it wasn’t provided using PFolder parameter and then it will prompt for Exchange administrator username and password to connect to Exchange Online. By default, the tool assumes that the issue being investigated is impacting to a specified public folder but all users are affected.

If the deletion issue happens only for a specific user, the user’s SMTP address can be provided as follows:

.ValidateExoPfDumpster.ps1 -PFolder pf2 -Affecteduser user@contoso.com

The tool will generate the public folder validation checks failures and proposed fixes results on the screen and will generate the ValidatePFDumpsterREPORT.txt file, as well. There are other files generated for either logging purposes or for logs to be shared with Microsoft support.

File Name	Content	Use
ValidatePFDumpsterREPORT.txt	Information about any issues found	The tool displays what it found, and in many cases, it provides a solution to fix the problem
ValidatePFDumpsterChecksLogging.csv	Information about the reason of tool run failure	The file will display errors encountered during running of the tool and at which stage it failed
PublicFolderInfo.xml	All required information about the affected public folder	Shared with Microsoft support if engaging support about this problem

Let’s check the following examples to get more clarification on how the tool works.

Example1: Running the tool on the affected public folder “pf2” where only one user is affected (user@(domain).com).

The tool points out two issues:

Neither the specified user nor the default user have sufficient permissions to delete items inside the public folder
Public folder size has exceeded the Individual Public Folder ProhibitPostQuota value

Example2: Running the tool on the affected public folder “t” where all users are affected

The tool points out the following:

Public folder and its dumpster don’t have the same content public folder mailbox
Public folder EntryId and DumpsterEntryID values are not mapped properly
Public folder size has exceeded Organization DefaultPublicFolderProhibitPostQuota value
Public folder dumpster has 1 subfolder

The tool also creates a log file containing all the required information “PublicFolderInfo.xml” to be shared with Microsoft support, if needed, and has provided mitigation for the last two issues.