A few minutes ago I deleted an empty Public Folder Mailbox (Second Hierarchy).
Suddenly, all Public Folders stopped working and when trying to dropdown public folders in Outlook users received a generic error.
Please note the public folders that stopped working had absolutely nothing to do with the Public Folder Mailbox. THey were in a different mailbox alltogether.
Everything seems to be okay now. After a few minutes the Public Folders came up again.
However, my question remains: Did I do something (potentially) disastrous? Can it be an issue to delete a Second Hierarchy PF mailbox when it is no longer required? I did not expect the sudden drop in all public folders and it had me shaking in my boots when it happened.