SOLVED: How To Stop Outlook From Using Public Folders

If you have ever had Exchange with Public Folders, you will know that there is currently no way to reverse the AD Schema additions and so Outlook will continue to look for Public Folders.  Microsoft has largely withdrawn support for Public folders, but your Outlook, even Outlook 2013, will hunt for it in the background because your Active Directory Schema, tells it to… but you can override and turn off Public Folder checking at the desktop level:

1. On your client PC, “Run–>regedit”
2. Locate “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\Setup”
3. Create a new DWORD Value called “HasPublicFolders”
4. Set its value to 0 (that is a zero)
5. Restart your Outlook

http://blogs.technet.com/b/johnmak/archive/2012/03/26/how-to-stop-outlook-from-using-public-folders.aspx

Thanks to “Zero” from Microsoft Partner Support for this solution.

http://partnersupport.microsoft.com/en-us/mpnprodcomm/forum/mpnpcoff-mpnoutlook/disable-public-folders-in-outlook-2013/6f51d108-ea25-4aca-88a6-136d507c8ca2