How do I get the full parent path of an Exchange public folder in Exchange 2010?

Question

If I need to perform a procedure on an Exchange public folder, such as changing permissions, but I don't have the full path to the public folder (which is required in the -identity parameter for most public folder commands), how do I get that full path?

Some resources I have found have suggested using the powershell get-publicfolder -recurse and filtering the results, but in a large organization with thousands of public folders that command can take hours, if it finishes at all.

Answer 1

I've run into this a number of times and it's been frustrating. More often than not, I wind up harassing a user who connects to that folder in order to get the full path from them. Once or twice I've just let it go and said "I can't do it without the full path".

But it turns out that get-recipient does not require the full path in order to return a result.

[PS] > Get-Recipient myPublicFolder
Name                                                        RecipientType
----                                                        -------------
myPublicFolder                                              PublicFolder

And get-publicfolder accepts pipeline input. So you can retrieve the parent path of a public folder (such as "\Parent\Path\myPublicFolder") with the following command:

[PS] > Get-Recipient myPublicFolder | Get-PublicFolder | Format-List ParentPath
ParentPath : \Parent\Path

I have tested and this works whether the public folder is mail-enabled or not. If multiple public folders match your get-recipient results, then this pipeline will return the parent path for all of them.

[PS] > Get-Recipient "marketing"
Name                                                        RecipientType
----                                                        -------------
Marketing-1                                                 PublicFolder
Marketing                                                   PublicFolder
Marketing-2                                                 PublicFolder
Marketing-3                                                 PublicFolder

[PS] > Get-Recipient "marketing" | Get-Publicfolder | fl Name,ParentPath
Name       : Marketing-1
ParentPath : \Parent\Path\Marketing
Name       : Marketing
ParentPath : \Parent\Path
Name       : Marketing-2
ParentPath : \Parent\Path\Sales
Name       : Marketing-3
ParentPath : \Parent\Path\Sales\Reports

I thought I'd share, just in case anyone else runs into the same frustration. This works on Exchange 2010.

This does not work in Exchange 2013 or later. As of this writing (Aug 2019), there does not appear to be any other way to easily retrieve the path of a public folder without filtering the get-publicfolder -recurse cmdlet.

Answer 2

In PowerShell:

$mailpf = Get-MailPublicFolder "yourEmailHere"
Get-PublicFolder $mailpf.EntryID

Answer 3

It's even more simple if you do this:

Get-MailPublicFolder "PublicFolderName" | Get-PublicFolder

The output will look something like this:

Name                                                        Parent Path
----                                                        -----------
PublicFolderName                                            \ParentFolderName

Answer 4

Use this

Get-PublicFolder -Recurse -ResultSize unlimited | where name -match "publicfoldername"

Answer 5

It's not working for me. For me it's working when I use this command:

Get-PublicFolder -Recurse | where {($_.MailEnabled -eq $True)}