"Subscribe" to Public Folder

[Ian]

Hello,

I have a public folder on our Exchange server, and it works
wonderfully, and all that. However, I'm trying to make it so that the
public folder will appear in the "Favorite Folders" section of the
"Mail" tab. Essentially, what I want is a setup whereby everyone on
the team can add this public folder to their "Favorite Folders" and
have the notifications like you get on the Inbox. For instance, when I
have new mail, my Inbox appears as "Inbox (1)" (if there's one new
message) in the "Favorite Folders" section and on the "All Mail
Folders" section as well.

I've thrashed for a while trying to get this to work. Selecting
RightClick > Add to Favorites... on the public folder itself adds it to
a "Favorites" folder, but in order to see that, you still need to view
the "Folder List" and look under public folders. As simple as this is,
I must accept that users are unlikely to go through that extra step, so
I'd really prefer if I could figure out how to get it to show up in the
standard "Favorite Folders" section.

I also tried dragging and dropping the public folder into the
favorites, but this seems to make a copy and not a reference (i.e. new
messages posted to the public fodler do not show up in the like-named
folder appearing in "Favorite Folders")

Thanks,
Ian

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The alternative to the procedure you described is to write a script to add the folder to PF Favorites programmatically and give that to the users to run. I'd show them how to use PF Favorites myself, because -- unlike running a script -- that's a skill they can reuse.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Ian]

I made some progress on this issue, but I'm not yet where I need to be.

I found that after adding the public folder, call it "group
discussion", to the Public Folders > Favorites that right clicking on
that newly created reference yielded a different context menu option
that said "Add to Favorite Folders." Lo and behold after selecting
this option, I now have an item in my "Favorite Folders" list called
"Group Discussion in Public Folders."

This is great. And a wonderful step forward. However it does not
appear that Exchange is maintaining *per user* Unread/Read flags for
these messages. For instance, if I send a post to the folder, it
appears as new. Once I (or anyone else it seems) read my just posted
message, it no longer appears as new for everyone else.

Surely there must be a way to do this... ideas?
Ian