Save as new excel file after every editing session

Question

Hi. I am trying to edit the attribute data of a hosted feature layer in Excel using the ArcGIS for Excel extension. Editing, editor tracking, and exporting are all enabled on the hosted feature layer.

When first opening Excel to edit the data, the edits save and appear as they should on the portal.

However, upon re-opening the Excel file to make additional edits, I am get these errors:

The previous edits are there, but Excel makes me save as a new file when I attempt to close. As a result, I am unable to keep updating the same Excel file when I want to make edits. I need to save as a new file at the end of every editing session, which is problematic for my end users.

After some experimenting, I realized that this is a problem with the specific feature layer I am trying to edit because I do not encounter these errors on other hosted feature layers.

Does anyone know any possible reasons for these errors? Could it be a problem with the cell character limit in excel? I have some text fields with high character limits. This dataset is also very large, with over 1,110 features and 30 fields. Additional info: I am using Portal 11.2.

ShannonCardoza · Answer

Hey there @mshanaghan Thanks for the reply and further testing. A few follow-up items.

1.  Can we have access to the ArcGIS layer that was added to Excel? Is this shared publicly?

2. One possible cause, and most likely, this error has something to do with the "coded value domain" ArcGIS data type. Excel will throw this type of error if there are too many options in the dropdown.

3. Lastly, would you be able to contact Tech support and create a case for this?

Thanks again,

SC

mshanaghan · Answer

Hi Shannon! Thank you for your response. Upon making a copy of the dataset, I encountered the same errors when attempting to edit in Excel.

ShannonCardoza · Answer

Good afternoon @mshanaghan! Thank you for your post.

That's awesome that you were able to dig a bit deeper into the issue. So to kind of recap here...were you able to determine this issue is data-specific? Does this mean your workflow can be completed successfully with another dataset? This answer will eliminate the need to determine or troubleshoot if this was caused by the environment or version.

If so, then we should proceed to understand if this is an Excel issue or an add-in issue. Typically Excel errors mean it's coming from Excel. I did some research on the error and found there could be several reasons why an Excel file may contain unreadable content. For example, File corruption or Excel cache is full. Could you try the workflow with say a copy of the dataset you are using? This could help eliminate file corruption and I will be checking into some of the other items you mentioned, such as character limit.

I will post here once I have an update...stay tuned!