Owners Can't Post to Public Folders?

This article applies to Exchange 2010 and older with Outlook 2007 and older. The Public Folder Administration options were supplied by the Exchange Client Extensions (ECE) add-in but Outlook 2010 and 2013 (and up) no longer include or use the ECE.

"When it rain, it pours" often applies to questions about Outlook and Exchange. We'll see very few questions about a problem, then all of a sudden everyone seems to have the problem. This week its about users with Owner permission being unable to post to public folders.

The problem:

"Two users have full owner rights to add/edit/delete entries in a public calendar. Currently neither of the two employees with full owner rights can add or edit or delete entries in the public calendar. They get a message saying "Your changes could not be saved because you don't have permission to modify some or all of the items in this folder. Do you want to save a copy of this item in the default folder for the items? " Any ideas about what is wrong?"

This is caused by an incorrect setting on the Public Folder. I know, you're thinking "Wow, what a revelation" . But seriously, it is an incorrect setting on the Administration tab of the folder's properties.

The default setting is "Drag/Drop posting is a: Move/Copy ". This allows anyone with the correct permissions to create or drag an item in the folder. When it's changed to Forward, the folder treats all items as forwarded items and the error occurs because the creator does not have permission to send mail on behalf of the folder.

So, there are two ways to fix the error. First is to set the Drag/Drop posting to Move/Copy. If you need to have it set to Forward, make sure the Owners have send on behalf permission for the folder and for the originator of the messages in the folder. This is set in Active Directory Users and Computers.

This begs the question: under what circumstances would you want it set to forward? When this is set to Move/Copy, items added to the folder show the original sender and this person remains the owner of the item, even if they don't have permission to post to the folder. The person who moved the item is not identified.

When its set to Forward, it identifies the item as from the person who moved the item and the original sender may be listed in the header in the message body.

Although it seems like Forward should be the default, if only to prevent someone from maliciously posting as another person, unless a user has send as permission for another account, it will be posted as "On behalf of" when using Move/Copy, so while an employee could post a notice from the CEO making tomorrow a company paid holiday, it shouldn't fool anyone.

If the original sent or received date is important, you'll want to use Move/Copy. When the setting is Move/Copy the original sent and received dates are retained, but when using Froward, the sent and received dates are changed to the date it was added to the folder.