Recently, we have released a Guided Walk Through (GWT) for troubleshooting public Folder replication issues in Microsoft Exchange 2003. There are a couple of ways to access the troubleshooter. You can use the link here to access it directly. As well, it will be embedded in various related public folder replication articles such as the following: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/842273.
Now, I know you are wondering why we came out with a troubleshooter for Exchange 2003 since it’s no longer in mainstream support? We made this decision for a number of reasons. First, there is a good amount of our Exchange customers who are still transitioning off Exchange 2003 and we want to help those customers as much as possible to move to our newer supported versions of the product. This is the best way to help guide those customers since we no longer have a phone support option for them. Secondly, for the most part, all of our Exchange server 2003 Public Folders issues have already been identified, so creating a troubleshooter covering this material means it will not change drastically. Finally, due to the fact that the public folder replication mechanism has not significantly changed for a while (until Exchange 2013), it made sense to start with Exchange 2003 as it gave us the framework that we can update for later versions relatively easily.
The support organization will be putting efforts into expanding this troubleshooter to include 2007/2010 in the future.
This walk through is really a guide through the replication troubleshooting, as laid out in a series of blog posts by Bill Long, here, here and here. It is not meant to replace all of the data that helps you understand the public folder replication process, but rather quickly give you the steps you need to help find the problem if there are problems with replication.
I wanted to thank the people who helped make this a reality. Here are the parties involved (that I am aware of):
Exchange support:
- Nick Basile
- Rob Whaley
- Bill Long
- Charlotte Raymundo
- Will Duff
- Nino Bilic
Documentation / content creation teams:
- Bobbie DeFault
- Geoffrey Crisp (Entirenet)
- Jerry Sitser (Entiernet)
- Jarrett Renshaw
- Star Li (Wicresoft)
- Chen Jiang
Regards,
Messaging Knowledge Engineer