Exchange Server 2010 mail enabled Public Folders no longer receives email from internal recipients

Problem

You notice that your Exchange Server 2010 mail enabled public folders no longer receive mail emails from internal users and when mail is sent to the public folder’s email address, a bounce back with the following message is returned:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:

~ Submissions (submissions@domain.com)
There's a problem with the recipient's mailbox. Please try resending the message. If the problem continues, please contact your helpdesk.

Diagnostic information for administrators:

Generating server: SVREXHT12.domain.internal

submissions@domain.com
#554 5.2.0 STOREDRV.Deliver.Exception:ObjectNotFoundException; Failed to process message due to a permanent exception with message The Active Directory user wasn't found. ObjectNotFoundException: The Active Directory user wasn't found. ##

Original message headers:

Received: from SVREXMB11.domain.internal ([fe80::e8f0:569d:b40e:dc8]) by
svrexht12.domain.internal ([fe80::3065:992f:8e93:6541%16]) with mapi id
14.01.0339.001; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:02:40 -0300
Content-Type: application/ms-tnef; name="winmail.dat"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
From: "Luk, Terence" <Terence.Luk@domain.com>
To: ~ Submissions <submissions@domain.com>
Subject: Test #4
Thread-Topic: Test #4
Thread-Index: Ac4lapdUx2SA9foMS5OUUeZMur3Jvw==
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:59:08 -0300
Message-ID: <6FFE876C24BAF5428BD9C31E6A5D5ADB6084A17A@svrexmb11.domain.internal>
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Language: en-US
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: <6FFE876C24BAF5428BD9C31E6A5D5ADB6084A17A@svrexmb11.domain.internal>
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Originating-IP: [10.40.2.10]

Solution

A quick search on the internet will show that every solution points to deleting the empty CN=Servers container in your legacy Exchange 2000 or 2003 organization that’s usually named First Administrative Group by default:

Configuration –> Services –> Microsoft Exchange –> Exchange Organization –> Administrative Groups –> First Administrative Group –> Servers:

What was confusing was that the environment I was troubleshooting has had Exchange Server 2010 installed for over 2 years and the client wasn’t all too enthusiastic about deleting the Servers container seeing how it has been working for all this time so I was asked to open up a ticket with Microsoft. As much as I would like to have gotten more information from the support engineer, I was told that they only handle break fix and would not be able to look at the root cause so not surprisingly, the engineer had me perform a manual backup of Active Directory and then proceed to delete the Servers container:

Once the container was deleted, the mail enabled public folders began receiving emails again.