You could also think of it as something similar to a shared folder on a hard drive, except that the focus is on email and the data is stored in your Exchange server.įor example, you might have set up an Exchange Public Folder for a team working on a specific project – all email that everyone needs to access can be stored here, so can contacts, tasks, and other items. What exactly are Public Folders? If you’ve never used this feature earlier, here’s what it’s for: Public Folders enable (limited) collaboration and the exchange of information by allowing the creation of shared folders that collect and store email and other information. While Exchange / Outlook Public Folders have been around for some time, they haven’t gained the features you’ll find elsewhere. Microsoft Outlook might be venerable, but it’s not the best option for collaboration. You really want to try out the alternatives to Outlook’s Public Folders However, there are other options out there, which not only bring more features to the table but also the benefits of being easier to deploy, manage and administer. For many businesses, Public Folders are the extent to which they’ve used email in a collaborative scenario. In this post, we’re focusing on Outlook’s Public Folders. Outlook might still be around, but even after adding collaborative features, it remains far behind what you could achieve with Google Workspace/Gmail. Google Workspace changed that, and its ability to work closely with other apps has extended its feature set. Critics used to complain email wasn’t made for collaboration, that it didn’t help in today’s emphasis on speed and agility. The real changes have come from the SAAS world, with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) leading the way. But we all have to adapt to change, and with collaboration and cloud apps in focus, email picked up new features designed to make your team work together in a more efficient manner.Įven Microsoft has made changes to Exchange and Outlook, but to be honest, shoehorning collaborative features into these enterprise applications hasn’t been as effective as we’d have hoped. On the contrary, it was meant just for one-on-one communication. Email might now be a great tool for collaboration but that’s not how it started out.

Outlook open public folder