XADM: Error Message When You Set Permissions on Public Folders: Invalid Windows Handle ID No: 80040102 Exchange System Manager

When you try to set (or save) new permissions on public folders, you may receive the following error message:

This behavior can occur if you modify the permissions of a public folder from both drive M (Exchange installable file system, or ExIFS]) and the Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) tree through Microsoft Outlook or Exchange System Manager.

Under normal operating conditions, when you change the permissions settings through Outlook or Exchange System Manager, the permissions that you select are written to ExIFS.

However, if you change the permissions settings from drive M, ExIFS does not write back the MAPI permissions. Therefore, the MAPI and ExIFS permissions settings may become inconsistent with each other, and this can prevent you from modifying the permissions from Outlook or Exchange System Manager.

To resolve this issue, use the Exchange Server Public Folder Information utility (Pfinfo.exe) to extract the permissions from the MAPI tree and then, with the Pfadmdat.txt file that is created, reapply any permissions.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Run Pfinfo.exe on the public folders to export the Access Control Lists (ACLs) to Pfadmdat.txt.
2. In Exchange System Manager, create a new top-level folder, and then move the affected folder and subfolders (those with the wrong permissions settings) into this new folder.
3. Set the permissions on the new top-level folder so that an Admin account is the owner.
4. Right-click the new top-level folder, select all tasks, propagate the setting, select the administrative rights and folder rights that you want, and then click OK.
   
   The permissions are now populated down the folder hierarchy.
5. Move the affected folder and subfolders back to their original locations.
6. Verify that, in Exchange System Manager, you can now modify the permissions.
7. Use the PFAdmin utility to import to the public folder tree the old permissions setting that you exported to Pfadmdat.txt. The syntax for using PFAdmin is as follows:

   PFAdmin [MAPI profile] <PFADMDAT.txt
   					

   NOTE: PFAdmin uses a TAB as a separator.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Issues with PFAdmin and PFInfo

You may experience the following issues with PFAdmin and PFInfo:

• PFAdmin and PFInfo only work with the released retail version of Exchange 2000 Server or with Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 1 (SP1). These utilities do not work with versions of Exchange 2000 that were released after Exchange 2000 SP1.
• In Microsoft Outlook 2000 and Microsoft Outlook 2002, both PFAdmin and PFInfo appear to work improperly.
• In the Exchange 2000 Server versions of PFAdmin, you may receive the following error message:
  COM Error, 80040e0e, IDispatch error #3086
  For additional information about this error message, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  307919  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307919/EN-US/ ) XADM: Error 80040e0e Occurs When You Run PFAdmin from the Exchange 2000 Resource Kit