Writing to Map Document Properties with Python

RyanSutcliffe

While working on some python scripts I quickly tried to erase the map title element via python using essentially the below code in a loop:

file = r"\\SUTCLIFFER-NEW\C$\Users\rsutcliffe\Desktop\Untitled.mxd" mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(file) mxd.title = '' #Additional lines tried mxd.save del mxd

Doing this returns no errors but once I recheck the mxd the values are not removed. This happens on every mxd I've tried/created. It seems I'm having trouble writing to this property: mxd.title. Is anyone able to spot what I'm missing?

I noticed the following posts:

The first is about trouble writing to the map document properties in a "Save As":
http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/29952-Accessing-Map-Document-Properties-via-arcpy.mapping?highlight=title+write

The second is someone reportedly having success editing the property by running the code from within the mxd itself which I am also not able to do even though the code is pretty much the same.
http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/38202-Script-Error-Populating-mxd-document-properties-with-arcpy.mapping-module?highlight=title+write

any thoughts, advice are welcome. Thanks in advance.

Ryan Sutcliffe

RyanSutcliffe

I realized that the mxd.save command was not causing the save to occur and that I could actually affect the mxd title property within the map if I saved it manually after. Checked with ESRI Canada and the support person reminded me that the () after the mxd.save method was crucial and causing the issue.

Thus, the following code will do the trick:

file = r"\\SUTCLIFFER-NEW\C$\Users\rsutcliffe\Desktop\Untitled.mxd" mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(file) mxd.title = "" #Don't forget those brackets! mxd.save() del mxd

Simple syntax error. Thanks for your help Mathew, thanks for your help Jonothan H. at ESRI.

Ryan