Replace public folder contacts in Exchange Online

In many companies the shared address book has lived in a public folder for years: customers, suppliers, emergency services, maintained by reception or by sales. At the desk that works. On the smartphone none of it arrives, and the tools administrators have used to bridge the gap so far are starting to break. This post shows why, and what a move without disruption for the team looks like.

Why do contacts from public folders not reach the phone?

Public folders are a tool for Outlook on the computer. Microsoft writes in the public folder FAQ: “Public folder access works from Outlook for Windows desktop and Outlook for Mac. However, smart phone client apps including Outlook for Android or Outlook for iOS do not support connecting to public folders.” So the Outlook app does not show the folder, and what the app does not know it cannot pass on to the phone’s contacts. Caller ID stays empty: the supplier calls, the phone shows only the number.

That is not going to change. Microsoft is not retiring public folders (“Are public folders going away? No.”, same page), but it is not extending them to mobile devices either.

What administrators do today

Anyone familiar with the problem has usually chosen one of these routes:

Why now?

Microsoft is retiring Exchange Web Services (EWS) in Exchange Online. According to the overview of the EWS deprecation, the retirement starts in October 2026 for all organisations, and in April 2027 EWS is fully off. Until then EWS can still be enabled for individual, explicitly allowed applications; after that no longer.

For public folders this is the decisive point. Among the capabilities Microsoft explicitly does not bring to Graph is “Generic Public Folder CRUD”, that is creating, reading, updating and deleting in public folders. Planned is only an export and import of whole folders, “This capability doesn't include public folder CRUD APIs”. A tool that reads contacts from a public folder daily has no interface for that after April 2027.

Two destinations that Graph can read

The route leads through a one-off move into a source that Microsoft Graph can read, and distribution from there into the mailboxes. Two destinations suggest themselves.

1. A contact folder in a shared mailbox

This is the smallest step for the team, because maintenance continues in Outlook. This is how it goes:

1. Create a shared mailbox, for example contacts@company.com, and give the team full access.
2. In classic Outlook for Windows, open the public folder, select all contacts and copy them into a contact folder of the shared mailbox. Several folders (customers, suppliers) stay several folders.
3. Take samples: open a few contacts in the new folder and compare them with the old one.

More on the page Shared mailbox contacts on every smartphone.

2. A SharePoint list

A list fits if the contacts are to get columns that an Outlook contact does not have, or if another team maintains them in SharePoint. For this, first copy the contacts into a contact folder as above, export them from there in Outlook as a CSV file and transfer the table into the list. Which column belongs to name, company, phone or email, you define in GALYNSKI when adding the source. More on the page A SharePoint list as a contact source.

Afterwards: an address book instead of a script

In GALYNSKI you create an address book and add a source: the contact folder of the shared mailbox or the SharePoint list. Recipients are all users or up to three groups, say only the field service. From then on:

• Every person gets a dedicated contact folder in their mailbox. Private contacts stay untouched.
• A daily run reconciles. New contacts are added, changed ones updated, deleted ones disappear from the phones too.
• If a large part of the source suddenly disappears, GALYNSKI stops the affected address book before a single contact is changed, and reports the reason.
• The folder appears by itself in Outlook on the computer and in the Outlook app. The contacts reach the contacts app and caller ID through the Outlook app: on Android with “Sync Contacts”, on the iPhone with “Save Contacts”. No extra app, no MDM profile. More in the guide Company contacts on Android.

Anyone who also needs the colleagues from the directory adds the global address list as a second source to the same address book; within one address book a contact with the same email address appears only once, even if it is in both sources.

Switching over without anyone missing anything

1. Create the shared mailbox or the SharePoint list and copy the contacts from the public folder into it.
2. Limit the recipients to a small group first, say IT or reception, and check on a phone the next morning: does the name appear when a supplier calls? Does the search in the contacts find the customer?
3. Then extend the recipients to all users or the intended groups.
4. Set the public folder to read-only and tell the team where maintenance happens from now on. Anyone who copied contacts themselves earlier deletes those old copies.
5. Switch off the old script or tool before EWS switches it off.

What you should know beforehand

• One direction. Maintenance happens in the source. If someone changes a distributed contact on the phone, the next run overwrites the change.
• Contact groups (distribution lists stored as an entry in the contact folder) are not distributed, only the individual contacts.
• Photos from a shared mailbox or a SharePoint list are not included. GALYNSKI distributes photos for colleagues from Microsoft 365.
• Very large folders: if a source has more than 10,000 contacts, the run reports it instead of silently truncating.

GALYNSKI costs 4 € per user per month, less on the annual plan; counted are the people who receive contacts. All prices are on the pricing page, the processing in the DPA.

Frequently asked questions

Will public folders keep working after the end of EWS?

Yes. Microsoft is not retiring public folders, and Outlook for Windows and Mac continues to access them. Affected are programs and scripts that read or write public folders via EWS. According to Microsoft, Microsoft Graph gets no replacement for that.

Can GALYNSKI distribute contacts directly from a public folder?

No. GALYNSKI works exclusively with Microsoft Graph, and Graph cannot read public folders. That is why the contacts move once into a shared mailbox or a SharePoint list; from there GALYNSKI distributes them daily.

Shared mailbox or SharePoint list: which fits better?

The shared mailbox if the team should keep maintaining contacts in Outlook as it did in the public folder. The SharePoint list if the contacts are to be maintained with the columns, views and permissions of a list. Both sources fit into the same address book; recipients are all users or up to three groups.

What happens to contacts employees have already copied themselves?

They stay where they are. GALYNSKI writes only into its own contact folder and does not touch private contacts. Anyone who has the same person twice on the phone should delete their old copy before the start.

Does this need an app or an MDM?

No extra app and no MDM. Afterwards the contacts live in a folder in each person’s mailbox. Outlook shows it by itself; the contacts reach the contacts app and caller ID through the Outlook app, on Android with “Sync Contacts”, on the iPhone with “Save Contacts”.