Remove a Public Folder

Applies to: Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Online

Topic Last Modified: 2013-02-13

You may need to remove public folders that are no longer being used in your organization. To help determine which public folders should be removed, see View Statistics for Public Folders and Public Folder Items.

For additional management tasks related to managing public folders, see Public Folder Procedures.

For additional management tasks related to public folders, see Public Folder Procedures in Exchange Online.

What do you need to know before you begin?

Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes.
You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Public folders" entry in the Sharing and Collaboration Permissions topic.
You can’t delete a mail-enabled public folder. Before you can delete it, you must first disable email for the public folder. For more information, see Mail-Enable or Mail-Disable a Public Folder.
For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard Shortcuts in the Exchange Admin Center.

Tip:
Having problems? Ask for help in the Exchange forums. Visit the forums at: Exchange Server, Exchange Online, or Exchange Online Protection

Navigate to Public folders > Public folders.
In the list view, select the public folder you want to delete, and then click Delete .
A warning box displays asking if you’re sure you want to delete the public folder. Click Yes to continue.

This example deletes the public folder Help Desk\Resolved. This command assumes that the Resolved public folder doesn’t have any subfolders.

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Remove-PublicFolder -Identity "\Help Desk\Resolved"

This example tests the previous command without making any modifications.

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Remove-PublicFolder -Identity "\HelpDesk\Resolved" -WhatIf

This example removes the public folder Marketing and all its subfolders because the command runs recursively.

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Remove-PublicFolder -Identity "\Marketing" -Recurse:$True

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Remove-PublicFolder.