OL2000: (CW) Improving Public Folder Access Performance

Accessing Public Folders with many items on a Microsoft Exchange Server with Microsoft Outlook is sometimes slow. This article suggests how to improve the performance of Public Folder access.

Whenever a user creates a new View or changes the sort order for a given public folder, Microsoft Exchange Server creates indices to the folder. Creating a new view for the first time can take several minutes in a folder with a large number of items.

Because many indices can be created by many users, they are not kept permanently. Instead, the server maintains a temporary cache of views and indices. By default, the system deletes those not used for eight days. If your view is "aged out" due to lack of use, the next time you open it, you are likely to have to wait while the system creates a new index.

To improve performance of Public Folders, try the following:

• If possible, create the Folder Views you will need when the number of items in the folder is small. This reduces the time to create the original index.
• Use your views to access the Public Folders at least as frequently as the default aging parameter. If the aging value is the eight-day default, access them at least weekly.
• If feasible, have the Server Administrator increase the view-aging parameters in the registry. See the References section for instructions.

NOTE: These improvement techniques do not apply when running off-line, because then the multiple server indices are not available to you. The Outlook client only supports one index at a time, so changing views off-line may be slow with large item volumes.

For more information about this subject, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: