{"id":2283,"date":"2019-02-21T13:46:36","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T00:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/?p=2283"},"modified":"2023-05-07T03:26:10","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T03:26:10","slug":"fixing-common-arcgis-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/fixing-common-arcgis-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing Common ArcGIS Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post covers some of the common problems that arise with ArcGIS, and how to fix them.<\/em><\/p>\n

There’s no getting around the fact that GIS is frustrating.\u00a0 And it doesn’t get any better as you do; the problems just transmogrify into different kinds of challenges.\u00a0 In this post we’ll look at the top five common problems encountered with ArcGIS (Ed. what, only 5?!?<\/em>) and hopefully their fixes.\u00a0 You’ll see that there are actually six problems listed below – one of them has no easy fixes.<\/p>\n

Tool Not Licensed<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is one of the most common problems arising.\u00a0 You go to use a tool from ArcToolbox and get this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For many, this is the first of many unexplained ArcGIS errors – but it’s one of the easiest to fix.\u00a0 There are several built in “extensions”, like Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst, that provide extra functionality.\u00a0 Back in the day, they had to be purchased separately and had their own licenses and needed to be “turned on”.\u00a0 We have access to them through our academic site license.\u00a0 To fix this problem, go the menus at the top of ArcMap (or ArcCatalog) and look for “Customize<\/strong><\/span>” (sic).\u00a0 Under that menu, go to Extensions<\/strong><\/span> and tick the box next to the extension listed in the error message – Spatial Analyst in the above example (probably the most common one):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This should fix that problem.<\/p>\n

Red exclamation\u00a0marks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes it happens when you open an ArcMap map and you see the dreaded red exclamation marks:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These occur when ArcMap can’t find the layers that are on the map.\u00a0 They can be fixed by redirecting ArcMap to look in the right location.<\/p>\n

A quick aside about map documents.\u00a0 The main function of a map document is to store all the settings for your map.\u00a0 It keeps track of what layers are on the map as well as how you’ve symbolised your map in the same way that a Word document stores all your changes.\u00a0 It also keeps track of tools that you’ve run.<\/p>\n

An easy way to see where the map document is looking is to click the “List by Source”
\nbutton, \"\"<\/a>. When clicked, the path to each layer is shown in the Table of Contents:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We can see that it’s looking in J:\\Data\\Coastline for the “coastline” layer – and has found it.\u00a0 This isn’t so helpful for the other layers so let’s dig deeper by right-clicking on one of the layer names and going to Properties<\/strong><\/span> > Source<\/strong><\/span>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So it’s looking for a Rivers shapefile in J:\\Courses\\ERST202\\WMS.\u00a0 Let’s have a look in that folder and see why it’s not finding it:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So this appears to be the problem – this must be a very old map document because now those layers are in a geodatabase rather than as separate shapefiles.<\/p>\n

Even though the layer name is the same, it’s in a different format so as far as ArcMap is concerned, what it’s looking for isn’t there, hence the red exclamation mark.<\/p>\n

Happily it’s pretty easy to fix and we are now armed with the information we need – the path<\/a> to the proper layer.<\/p>\n

Back in ArcMap, you can either go back to Properties<\/strong><\/span> > Source<\/strong><\/span>, click the “Set Data Source” button and redirect it, but you’ll have to do this layer by layer.\u00a0 Alternatively, click on the mark itself and redirect there:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That should deal to the mark:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As a double bonus, doing it this way has reset the paths for the other vector layers.\u00a0 Doing the same with one of the raster layer should fix the three en masse.<\/p>\n

As a side note – this often happens when copying maps and data between places.\u00a0 Say you’re working on a map on your H: drive and you want to work on this on your laptop or home computer.\u00a0 So you dutifully copy everything to a USB drive and then copy to a new location on a different computer.\u00a0 When you open the map, it’s awash in red.\u00a0 Happily, again, there’s an easy way to prevent this before you copy.\u00a0 First, make sure your data and map are in one folder.\u00a0 Second, go to File<\/strong><\/span> > Map Document Properties<\/strong><\/span> and tick the wee box at the bottom reading “Store relative path name to data sources”:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This simply means that ArcMap is going to disregard the whole path and just look in the local folder for the data.<\/p>\n

In this example, it would ignore “H:\\” and just look in the ERST202 folder.<\/p>\n

This could save you a lot of heartache but does mean that you’ve got to be aware of where all your layers are and that they’re all in the same place.<\/p>\n

It might mean copying\/clipping layers from off of J: and into your transportable folder as your laptop at home won’t be able to find the J: drive very easily.<\/p>\n

(Another option is to use Dropbox to keep all your files in one place.\u00a0 You could<\/em> try this with OneDrive<\/a>, but I would wouldn’t recommend it.)<\/p>\n

Missing Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes, your Table of Contents simply goes missing:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s like getting in the car and the steering wheel is gone.\u00a0 Here’s the quick and easy fix.\u00a0 From the menus go to the Window menu and you’ll see you can click on the Table of Contents:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Can’t add a field<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adding a new field is a fundamental thing with attribute tables but sometimes when you go to add a field, you see this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Add Field…” is greyed out.<\/p>\n

This happens if you’ve got an editing session open, which pretty much locks up making changes like this.<\/p>\n

The easiest thing to do is to stop your editing session (and save any changes!), come back and add your field and then reopen your editing session.<\/p>\n

But sometimes you get something like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You’ll come across this one when you’re not\u00a0in an editing session and the other “application\/user” is invariably ArcCatalog.\u00a0 If you’re previewing that particular layer in Catalog, it “locks” the layer, preventing you from making any changes to the data.\u00a0 Closing ArcCatalog is the easiest fix to this problem.<\/p>\n

Error 001143 – Background server threw an exception<\/strong><\/p>\n

This one is also relatively common – you’re running a tool and it fails with this error.\u00a0 I’ve yet to fully understand why this happens, but still it does – quite regularly.\u00a0 By default, tools are run “in the background” meaning that while a tool is running you can do other stuff with ArcMap.\u00a0 When a conflict arises, the part of the code that does this (the background server) throws an exception (the actual technical term is “throws a wobbly”).\u00a0 You can fix this by going to the Geoprocessing Menu and looking for “Geoprocessing Options”.\u00a0 In the window that pops up, untick the Enable Background Geoprocessing:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The downside of this is that you won’t be able to do other work until the tool has finished its work.<\/p>\n

Error 999999 – Something unexpected caused the tool to fail<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most everyone will have experienced this one.\u00a0 Often when a tool fails to run, you can get a bit of feedback on why it did so.\u00a0 Here’s an example – I’ve run the\u00a0Contour tool so that I get an error (I was having a lot of problems that day…):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Helpful hint – check out the processing results by going to Geoprocessing<\/strong><\/span> >\u00a0 Results<\/strong><\/span>.\u00a0 I have this tab always open in my Table of Contents – you can dock it there)<\/p>\n

With most errors you get some information that will help solve the problem.\u00a0 But error 999999<\/a> is not one of them.\u00a0 It might as well be 666<\/a>.\u00a0 These errors require a lot more work to figure out and often, simple closing and reopening your map document will help (but not always).\u00a0 In this case I did get a little bit of helpful info, but not much really.\u00a0 By their own admission, ESRI says:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So even they don’t know what went wrong.\u00a0 If they persist, try here<\/a>.\u00a0 And may the Force be with you.<\/p>\n

Making ArcGIS work faster in general<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a lot of tips and tricks to getting the most out of ArcGIS.\u00a0 Here’s a good summary of things that help<\/a>.\u00a0 The built in basemaps can often slow up ArcMap’s ability to get things done and working locally is often a good option if you can.\u00a0 There’s always been a bit of a conflict with ArcGIS and our network but I have yet to find a way to improve that.<\/p>\n

Hope you find one or more of these helpful.\u00a0 There’s no getting around the cold, hard fact that working with GIS is frustrating.\u00a0 But hopefully the pain is worth the benefit.\u00a0 The only fitting way to end this post is with the inevitable window that we will all face before we cross the River Styx:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

C<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post covers some of the common problems that arise with ArcGIS, and how to fix them. There’s no getting around the fact that GIS is frustrating.\u00a0 And it doesn’t get any better as you do; the problems just transmogrify into different kinds of challenges.\u00a0 In this post we’ll look at the top five common […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4112,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions\/4112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lincoln.ac.nz\/gis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}