Saving a toolbox from 10.4 to 10.3

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04-19-2016 03:20 AM
DuncanHornby
MVP Notable Contributor

All,

I want to confirm with the user community that I have found a bug or is it some behaviour I have misunderstood? I have upgraded to 10.4. I have a toolbox created in 10.4 with a single script tool. So I have wired up a python script and exposed it as a tool and everything runs fine. If I choose Save As and save the toolbox to 10.3 (or any other earlier version) it creates a toolbox but it does not show the script tool inside. According to Windows Explorer the tbx files are exactly the same size as shown below:

Capture.PNG

Is there a bug in 10.4 that is not allowing it to save backwardly? If so this is show stopper as no one can share anything!

Interestingly if the toolbox includes a model then I can view that in a earlier version but not a script tool.

The official help file page "Saving toolboxes to earlier versions" gives no indication that script tools are treated differently so this is why I wonder if it is bug?

Duncan

21 Replies
DavidWasserman
Occasional Contributor III

I know this is a resolved thread, but I recently had this problem too. When ever I try to back save my 10.4 toolbox, 3 of the 4 tools I had disappear. Do you have any advice on moving the tools to a new TBX?

David Wasserman, AICP
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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

create the toolbox and copy ... but I usually go up the tree when creating toolboxes or use the save as option to get an older version, thenn on occasion, I have to fiddle on an older version machine.  There hasn't been much in the way of changes except for the movement to PRO which provides a nice creation interface

Toolbox creation in ArcGIS Pro

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curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor

David - I'm wondering if your tool naming is causing this problem -- it looks like these tools are similarly named. You may want to try renaming your tools (not the captions - the tools) so that they don't all start with the same characters and see if that behaves better.

Of course this is the kind of thing that should be logged w support if it is easily reproduced.

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DavidWasserman
Occasional Contributor III

Curtis, actually renaming the tool name (internal, not the label) is how I got it to work in model builder again. Does the label and name need to start with a different letter? Thanks this does seem like something I should check more. I currently cannot save to 10.3 still even with the changes, but I have not tried changing the labels or altering the first letter.

David Wasserman, AICP
curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor

I'm wondering if the tool names may be not unique enough to be differentiated when the toolbox is converted.

curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Just heard from Esri support on this. Known bug in 10.4, fixed in 10.5!

BUG-000095717: A model containing certain tools, including any tools in the Analysis > Overlay toolset and the Unsplit Line and Feature to Line (Data Management) tools, created in ArcMap 10.4 toolbox and saved to a previous version toolbox disappears.] this Bug has been fixed in 10.5 but you can track in on the My Esri site under the Support tab.


They had a workaround though. Although 10.5 is coming very soon, some of us are stuck at old versions for a long time so here it is. This is good as Pro can be installed alongside any version of Desktop. I tried this with a problematic toolbox a user gave me using Pro 1.3.1 and the workaround works!

The current workaround is to save the toolbox to a previous version using ArcGIS Pro.

DavidWasserman
Occasional Contributor III

While this is helpful to know, I am not sure I used those tools in these tool boxes BUT I did use the line geometry class extensively. Could that also be an issue? 

David Wasserman, AICP
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curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor

I'm pretty sure this has to do with complex binary and text data that is kind of tricky to back port. Fortunately they got this fixed at 10.5 (any week now!)

In general if you really want to support multiple versions I recommend developing in the old version, things are tested throughly forward, so for example, I have 9.3 toolboxes with models and scripts that work fine at 10.4.

DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

Any ETA on the enhancements list? and/or fixed list?

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curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Nothing yet. I'm sure it's coming soon.

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