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Export attribute table to excel with photo attachments

NicholasMartin1

I am using Collector on a project that relies heavily on photo attachments. Viewing the photographs of collected data points in ArcGIS Online is working well, but I also want to share these photo attachments in other formats.

Specifically, I want to export an attribute table to a spreadsheet with photo attachments viewable on the spreadsheet (or create a report from ArcMap with these photo attachments). I also would like to be able to share feature classes in ArcMap that include photograph attachments. However, I haven’t figured out how to achieve either.

When I export ArcGIS Online feature classes to ArcGIS for desktop, the attachments are viewable in the attachment manager for each point. If I try to export the feature class to share with another party, however, the attachments are lost. Similarly, when I export the attribute table to a spreadsheet the photos aren’t viewable.

So I have two questions:

1) Is it possible to easily share feature classes in ArcGIS that include photo attachments?
2) Is it possible to include photo attachments when I export an attribute table to a spreadsheet?

Any help or guidance is appreciated. Thank you!

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SarahRijneke

Hello, I see that most of the replies in this thread are almost 10 years old! I'm wondering if anyone has an updated workflow using ArcGIS Pro. I would like to create an excel table or report with feature attributes & attachments (photos). My dataset has been downloaded from ArcGIS Online and archived so it lives in a stand alone geodatabase.

PascualBenito

@Alina.Taus: With regards to getting multiple attachments to display I saw in the Report Designer documentation that you can have sub-reports based on related records:

Reports can have multiple related reports, and likewise, you can include related reports within another related report (as long as the data source participates in a relationship).

Source: ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)

So I was thinking that perhaps you can figure out way to have your photo URL's structured as 1-to-many related records as opposed to a 1-to-1 join and then have each photo show up as a sub-report within the main report for each feature. (I have not done this and have not seen an example of how the related reports appear on the page.... so really this is just a possible approach that you could look into).

AlinaTaus

Hi TJ,

No, unfortunately I have not been able to figure that out. If I do, I will make sure to post the solution here.

Alina

TJKeiran1

Hi Alina,

Thanks for providing direction on using the attachment manager reporting capabilities. Were you successful in getting all attachments associated with one record to show up as one report item?

JessicaThompson

So, you did your join to your attachment table? How did you get them to show up? I have up to 4 pictures per point...

That did work!

Thanks!

AlinaTaus

Hi Jessica,

I can get more than one attachment but I can only show one per asset in the report. So in the second picture that I posted above you can see the same asset (Facility ID= 1221) shows up twice in the report because there are two attachments for that one asset.

Does your report run if you only have one attachment?

Alina

JessicaThompson

Were you able to get multiple pictures to show up?

I keep getting this error.

AlinaTaus

Hi Jake,

Do you know if there is a way to copy/paste a subset of records from a feature class and still be able to bring over the corresponding attachments?

Thank you!

Alina

AlinaTaus

I figured out how to get the attachments to show up in a report created through ArcGIS:

I used the script in here to export my attachments to a folder.
I then used Jake's suggestion to join the attachment table to the feature class except I ended up reversing the join since I have more than one attachment per asset.
I exported this table and did some field calculations to get the full path to where the attachments were stored.
Then, I ran the Create Report Wizard. In the Report Designer, under Design Elements I dragged the Picture element to my report.
I changed the Image Source to point to the field where my Full Path is stored and ran the report! It worked!

The only thing I still have to figure out is how to get all attachments associated with one record to show up as one report item.

AlinaTaus

I am also looking into being able to create a .pdf Report that would allow me to embed any attachments (.jpgs) associated with a particular record.

JessicaThompson

Hoping for PDF – struggling with whole Collector --> ArcMap --> PDF workflow

JakeSkinner

What format (i.e. PDF, Excel) are you exporting your report to?

JessicaThompson

This seems painful... as our data gets updated daily and we want to create daily reports about the features collected including pictures...

Any suggestions on how to use this directly from the SDE?

Thanks!

Jessica

StephanLe_Roux

Jake,

I am struggling to get this working. This is exactly what I need to do. I want to extract my table to a spreadsheet with a hyperlink pointing to multiple photos for a single record.

I have tried running your script. I am not a programmer but only a user.

First I tried running it in IDLE but it came back with :

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C:\temp\extract_photos_Test\2Photos.py", line 45, in <module>

for row in cursor:

RuntimeError: Objects in this class cannot be updated outside an edit session [WaterSamplingPoints]

The I tried running it in ArcMap 10.2.2 and got the following error :

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C:\temp\extract_photos_Test\2Photos.py", line 49, in <module>

row[1] = path + os.sep + dict[key][1]

IndexError: list index out of range

Failed to execute (Script).

Can you please give some advice ?

Regards

davedoesgis_1-1760198785955.png

JakeSkinner

Hi Hunter,

Here is an example on how you can do this using python. The below code updates two fields (Image1, Image2) in a feature class called Point.

Note: I needed to delete the relationship class between the feature class and the attachments table in order to have the code execute successfully.

import arcpy, os

from arcpy import env

env.workspace = r"C:\temp\python\test.gdb"

path = r"C:\temp\python\Attachments"

fc = "Point"

table = "Point__ATTACH"

dict = {}

with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fc, ["GlobalID"]) as cursor:

for row in cursor:

OID = row[0]

dict.setdefault(OID, [])

with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(table, ["ATT_NAME"], "REL_GLOBALID = '" + str(OID) + "'") as cursor2:

for row2 in cursor2:

dict[row[0]].append(row2[0])

del cursor, cursor2

for key in dict:

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(fc, ["Image1", "Image2"], "GlobalID = '" + str(key) + "'") as cursor:

for row in cursor:

row[0] = path + os.sep + dict[key][0]

row[1] = path + os.sep + dict[key][1]

cursor.updateRow(row)

del cursor

print "Finished"

HunterSimpkins

I have a very similar question to Nicholas', but I need to be able to attach two photos to each record/point in the spreadsheet. The data consist of highway signs with a picture of the front and back of each sign, collected in Collector for ArcGIS. I successfully exported the batch attachments from ArcGIS Online and updated the file path in the Attachment table. I now have two photos that reference one Rel_GlobalID from the point feature class:

I'd like to create a second column that would hold the path of the second image and export this table to excel so the rest of the project team can locate the appropriate photos for each sign (they don't use ArcMap). I'd rather not have duplicate points/records in the dataset, so I have not explored the one-to-many join options. I'm a python newbie, so any clues towards scripting this would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

JakeSkinner

Hi Nicholas,

1) Instead of exporting the feature class, you will want to copy/paste the feature class to another geodatabase. Attachments are stored in a table and are related through a relationship class to the associated feature class. Performing an export will not export the relationship class and related table, but a copy/paste will.

2) Since the attachments are stored in the related table, you would need to export the attachment table. However, the attachments are stored as BLOBs, so they won't be viewable in the excel spreadsheet. One thing you could do is:

1. Export the attachments to a directory using a python script:

import os, arcpy
tbl = r"C:\Temp\Python\Test.gdb\Point__ATTACH"
fldBLOB = 'DATA'
fldAttName = 'ATT_NAME'
outFolder = r"C:\Temp\Python\Attachments"

with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(tbl,[fldBLOB,fldAttName]) as cursor:
   for row in cursor:
      binaryRep = row[0]
      fileName = row[1]
      # save to disk
      open(outFolder + os.sep + fileName, 'wb').write(binaryRep.tobytes())

print 'Finished'

2. Join the attachment table to the feature class (using the feature class OBJECTID and the attachment table REL_OBJECTID)

3. Export the feature class table to another format

4. Update the ATT_NAME field to include the path to where the images were exported

You could then have a hyperlink in the spreadsheet to the associated image.

davedoesgis_0-1760198769787.png

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