Creating Resource scheduling gives an error

Ok, lets see if I can make sense to anyone out there reading.

Recently, about a week and a half ago, our exchange went down.  Currently everything seems to be back up except the Public Folder information store which is still down and still on the old mail server.  I am trying to create a Conference Room resource and when I go to outlook as that user and click on tools--options--calendar options--resource scheduling it gives me this error "The connection to the Microsoft Exchange Server is unavailable.  Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action."  Now I know I'm connected because I can send and receive emails.......so does the public folder issue have anything to do with this error and the fact that the public folders are not up and running yet?

Thanks