Public folders in Microsoft Outlook are similar to shared folders in Groupwise. They allow a group of individuals to hold electronic conversations and to share information. Each public folder has an "owner" who is responsible for that folder and who gives the members of the group permission to access the contents of the folder or to add files to it. Your professor is the owner of the public folder for your class. The "owner" is the only person who can delete the folder. He/she gives the members of the group specific rights to perform certain actions related to the folder: to send an email message to the folder, to delete that message, to place a file in the folder, and then to modify or delete that file.

When you open Microsoft Outlook, you should see a hierarchy of folders on the left side of the window. (If you don’t, then click on File/Folder list on the menu toolbar at the top of the screen. You may want to make sure that File/Outlook Bar is unclicked as well.) At the bottom of the hierarchy there should be a folder labeled "Public Folders". Click on the plus sign (+) to the left of the label and that will make the subfolders "Favorites" and "All Public Folders" appear. Click on the plus sign beside "All Public Folders" and that will expand the hierarchy. If this is for a class, then click on the plus signs beside "Academic", then "Classes", then the name of the professor of your class. You will finally see a listing of the public folders established by your professor. If you highlight the folder for your class, you should be able to view the contents of that folder.

So you don’t have to wander through an entire list of public folders every time to get to the one that you wish to view, you can put a copy of that folder in "Public Folders/Favorites." (Notice that the latter is just above "All Public Folders".) Click and drag the Public Folder that you want – to "Favorites". Please note, if you drag the public folder anywhere else in the hierarchy, it will be treated somewhat differently than it would be if placed in "Favorites".

Highlight and double-click any message line that appears in the folder. That will enable you ‘post’ a reply to that message. See "Replying to a Message in a Public Folder" below to do that.

You can use the public folder for discussion. To do that, you must ‘post’ messages to the folder.

1. Highlight the public folder you wish to post a message to.
2. Click on "New" on the toolbar at the top of the Outlook window. This will bring up a window for developing you message. Notice that the window tells you where the message will be posted and allows you to input a subject heading and the message. Once you have done both of those, . . .
3. Click on "Post" at the top of the window. The message will then appear in the public folder and will be accessible to anyone with permission to do so.

After you have opened a message in a public folder, you can reply to it in two ways. You can post a reply to the public folder for the entire group to view or you can reply to the originator of the message privately. Note: make sure that you are aware whether you are responding to the public folder or to someone privately. That may save you some embarrassment down the road.

Posting a reply to the public folder:

You can just open a message and then click on "Post Reply". A reply form will appear for you to write your response.)

Or, you can:

1. Highlight a message in the public folder. Right click on the message. Select "Post Reply to Folder". That will bring up a "Post" window that has the original message and space for replying to it. Note that the subject of the original message is designated as a "conversation". You can, at this point input a subject heading that relates to the conversation.
2. Type in your response and then click on "Post".

Replying privately to the originator of the message:

1. Highlight the message line in the folder, then right click on the message line.
2. Select "Reply" and a reply window will appear, with the name of the message originator in the "To:" field and a "Send" icon, rather than "Post". Generate your reply as you would any non-public folder message and then click on "Send".

To view related message together, right click on the message that you wish to find related messages about and then select "Find All/Related Messages". This will bring up a window that includes the message lines for all of the related messages. They are listed chronologically with the most current being at the top.

You can also generate threads in a public folder by clicking on "View" on the toolbar and selecting "Current View/By Conversation Topic". This will create a hierarchy of messages according to the topic of ‘conversation’.

1. Highlight the public folder you wish to place the file in.
2. Open Windows Explorer, find and highlight the file you wish to place in the public folder.
3. Decrease the size of the Windows Explorer so you can see both the Outlook and Explorer windows.
4. Click and drag the file from the Explorer window to the public folder.
5. You can view the contents of the file in the public folder by double-clicking on that file.