Tag Archive for 'PFDAVAdmin'

Use PFDAVAdmin to recover deleted public folder or items

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 2. December, 2009
in Exchange
. 0 Comments

This might be old news to some :)
But PFDAVADmin is still a great utility and it works perfect for Exchange 2007 (from a client, see my last post). Besides using it to handle folder permissions, it can also recover public folders or public folder items, that have been accidentally deleted, as long as it’s within the retention time.

This article describes how to recover deleted public folders or items that are deleted from public folders in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server. You can use the Microsoft Exchange Server Public Folder DAV-based Administration (PFDAVAdmin) tool to recover public folders or items. You can use the methods that are described in this article when you cannot recover folders or items by using the Recover deleted items command in Microsoft Outlook.

Read more in the MS article.

PFDAVAdmin, Exchange 2007 and .NET v.1.1 issue

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 2. December, 2009
in IIS
. 0 Comments

PFDAVAadmin is still a great tool to manage public folders. It helps you do a lot of things "in bulk" that you would not easily be able to do otherwise (in a GUI). At least not as quickly and it works with Exchange 2000/2003/2007 even though it’s an old utility. However, on two different Exchange 2007 servers, I have received messages similar to this:

‘Could not expand https://localhost/exadmin/admin/mydomain.com/public%20folders/: name cannot begin with the ’0′ character, hexadecimal value 0×30. Line 1, position 386′

I figured something was wrong with my public folder configuration, but thanks to a discussions on the web, I found that it relates to the .Net framework used by the utility. This message occurs if you do not have the Microsoft .NET Framework v1.1 installed on the server. (Exchange 2007 uses the v2.0 Framework).
Microsoft recommends using the PFDAVAdmin utility from a workstation, not from the console of the Exchange server, though. If you get this message, do NOT install the v1.1 Framework on an existing Exchange 2007 server. You run the risk of resetting some of the v2.0 Framework settings and, thus, breaking Exchange Server 2007!

So if you want to run PFDAVAdmin from the console of an Exchange 2007 server, you need to install the v1.1 .NET Framework prior to building Exchange.

Thanks to Jim McBee for highlighting this.

PFDAVAdmin and Exchange 2007

Published
by
Peter Schmidt
on 2. July, 2008
in Exchange
. 1 Comment

If you have never used PFDAVAdmin (Public Folder DAV-based Administration Tool) to manage public folders and mailbox permissions, take a look at it, it’s a pretty nice utility. It’s not a new tool, but it can help you to do a lot of things “in bulk” that you might not have done as easily otherwise or at least certainly not as quickly. PFDAVAdmin works with Exchange 2000/2003/2007.

When working with Public Folder permissions on Exchange 2007 the tool is a great addition, for everyone who might not be that confident with managing PF permissions though the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) and would like a GUI for it.

However working with PFDAVAdmin on Exchange 2007 servers, I have seen this “error” message:
‘Could not expand https://localhost/exadmin/admin/mydomain.com/public%20folders/ : name cannot begin with the ’0′ character, hexadecimal value 0×30. Line 1, position 386′

The reason for this error is because PFDAVAdmin uses Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 (Exchange 2007 uses the .NET Framework 2.0) and if that is not installed, you’ll get the error message above.

Microsoft recommends using PFDAVAdmin from a workstation, not from the console of the Exchange 2007 server, though. So if you get this message, do NOT install the .NET Framework 1.1 on an existing Exchange 2007 server. You risk breaking the Exchange Server 2007! If you really want to run PFDAVAdmin from the console of an Exchange 2007 server, you would need to install the .NET Framework 1.1 prior to building Exchange.

Even so, using PFDAVAdmin from the workstation is much more desirable and recommended.

Download PFDAVAdmin here.