Removing all public folders from an Exchange 2007 server

I have just had to do some digging to solve one of the problems I am having. I am removing an Exchange Server 2007 server from my Exchange organization. I kept getting this error:

Mailbox Role Prerequisites
Error: Uninstall cannot proceed. Database 'Public Folder Database': The public folder database specified contains folder replicas. Before deleting the public folder database, remove the folders or move the replicas to another public folder database.

I did a little research and found these commands. Thanks Navin Tah for the example! The server I am removing is named HNLEX04. I have to run the command twice. Once for the root of the public folder tree (the IPM_Subtree) and once for the system folders (NON_IPM_SUBTREE). Remember this will delete all of your public folders! Here are the two commands:

Get-PublicFolder -Server HNLEX04 "\" -Recurse -ResultSize:Unlimited Remove-PublicFolder -Server HNLEX04 -Recurse -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue

Get-PublicFolder -Server HNLEX04 "\Non_Ipm_Subtree" -Recurse -ResultSize:Unlimited Remove-PublicFolder -Server HNLEX04 -Recurse -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue

Retrieving Exchange 2007 database status information

Something that I just wasted some time trying to figure out so I thought I would share. I was trying to figure out how to retrieve mailbox database status information using the Exchagne 2007 Exchange Management Shell. The output of the Get-MailboxDatabase kept showing the LastFullBackup and LastIncrementalBackup fields as empty. I finally figured out you have to include the -Status option in order to retrieve that information from the information store. (Status information is not kept in the Active Directory.) Below is a sample output:

Get-MailboxDatabase "HNLEX04\Mailbox Database" -Status FL Name,Server,*backup*,Mounted
Name : Mailbox Database
Server : HNLEX04
BackupInProgress : False
LastFullBackup : 1/27/2007 8:59:17 PM
LastIncrementalBackup : 1/28/2007 1:06:22 PM
RetainDeletedItemsUntilBackup : False
Mounted : True

Windows PowerShell TFM: Book by Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks

A new book hit the market this month called Microsoft Windows PowerShell: TFM by Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks. I saw a preview of some of the material in this book and it is the best PowerShell book I have seen. Add to that the fact that Don Jones is one of the best technical writers in the business and this makes for an awesome book.

Specified Network Name Is No Longer Available

I just came across a new one in the Exchange 2003 Exchange System Manager. In the Queue Viewer, there is the Additional Queue Information box at the bottom of the screen. This one Exchange server had a lot of messages queued up and most of the queues said: The specified network name is no longer available.

Weirdly enough, on Friday afternoon, this server was chugging along deliverying outbound mail just fine.

A little more investigation showed that DNS name resolution was working fine, too. I tried some telnet tests but the TELNET would never connect to a remote SMTP system.

Turns out that someone had blocked outbound SMTP during the evenings on the WebSense server.

Offline Address Book Synchronization 0X8004010F error

I was debugging an offline address book problem for someone the other day. They have a fairly large organization with multiple routing groups. The Outlook clients were seeing the following errors in the synchronization logs:

8:47:29 Synchronizing Hierarchy
8:47:29 Done
8:47:29 Microsoft Exchange offline address book
8:47:29 0X8004010F

Microsoft KB article seems to apply:
You receive an 0x8004010F error message when you try to synchronize the offline address list on an Exchange Server 2003 server in Outlook 2003 -http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905813

However, the KB article points to a misconfigured offline address book such as one that does not have any address lists in it.

I found that the users that were having this problem were in a routing group that did not have any public folder replicas of the offline address book files. Once we added the replicas for the Offline Address Book system folders, this problem went away.