The "age limits" function of a public folder do not work as expected in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

In Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2), you may find that the age limits function for a public folder does not work as expected. In this case, you may experience one of the following symptoms:

Symptom 1

If you select the Use database age defaults option for a public folder, the default age limit does not work. Therefore, the contents of that folder never expire.

Symptom 2

If you select the Age limit for replicas (days) option instead of the Use database age defaults option for the local replica age, the age limit works as expected. However, after you select the Age limit for replicas option, you cannot cancel the selection. This remains true even if you later try to select the Use database age defaults option.

Note To set an age limit for a public folder, use the Public Folder Management Console or use the Set-PublicFolder and the Set-PublicFolderDatabase commands in Exchange Management Shell.

Cause 1

The issue occurs because Database Age Limit is specified in days, but the value is saved in seconds. However, during online maintenance, the store process expects this value to be in days For example, if you set Database Age Limit to a value of 5 days, the corresponding attribute is set to 432000. When the store process reads this value, the value of the Use database age defaults option for a public folder is over 1,000 years. Therefore, the contents in the public folder do not expire.

Cause 2

This issue occurs because a function call is missed.

To resolve this problem, install the following update rollup:

For more information about the Set-PublicFolder command, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

For more information about the Set-PublicFolderDatabase command, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.