Update the public folder hierarchy in Exchange Online

You only need to update the public folder hierarchy if you want to manually invoke the hierarchy synchronizer and the mailbox assistant. Both these are invoked at least once every 24 hours for each public folder mailbox in the organization. The hierarchy synchronizer is invoked every 15 minutes if any users are logged on to a secondary mailbox through Microsoft Outlook or a Microsoft Exchange Web Services client.

What do you need to know before you begin?

  • Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

  • You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Public folders" entry in the Feature permissions in Exchange Online topic.

  • You can't perform this procedure in the EAC. You must use Exchange Online PowerShell.

  • We recommend that when you run this command with the InvokeSynchronizer parameter, you use the SuppressStatus parameter. If you don't use this parameter in the command, the output will display status messages every 3 seconds for up to one minute. Until the minute passes, you can't use that instance of Exchange Online PowerShell.

  • For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard shortcuts for the Exchange admin center.

Tip

Having problems? Ask for help in the Exchange forums. Visit the forums at Exchange Online or Exchange Online Protection.

Update the public folder hierarchy

This example updates the public folder hierarchy on the public folder mailbox PF_marketing and suppresses the command's output.

Update-PublicFolderMailbox -Identity PF_marketing -InvokeSynchronizer -SuppressStatus

This example updates all public folder mailboxes and suppresses the command's output.

Get-Mailbox -PublicFolder | Update-PublicFolderMailbox -InvokeSynchronizer -SuppressStatus