Public folders provide an effective way to collect, organize, and share information with others in your company. Public folders can contain any type of Outlook folder items, such as messages, appointments, contacts, notes, tasks, journal entries. You can set permissions so that only a selected group of people can read, post, edit, and delete information. A public folder can be also set to be available to anyone on the Exchange system. You can use public folders in Microsoft Outlook 2003, OWA, Microsoft Word 2003 and SharePoint Team Services.
Depending on your subscription, Exchange hosting may not include public folders.