Moving Data between different network drives. How do I fix broken file paths?

IanCrabb

Hi,

I have quite a lot of data (layers/Shps/mxd???s) saved in different places across two different network drives. Is there a way that I could just drag everything into one folder on one drive and run some sort of python script that will tell ArcGIS desktop10.1 to ignore the full file path of the layers and only look for the latter half of the file path in the specific drive/folder?
I would like to do this without changing the source of each layer as there would be almost a thousand of them.

Example:

Currently I have

M:\Planning\Development Plan\city sector.lyr
M:\Planning\Development Plan\city sector.shp
F:\Planning policy\Shapefiles\BDY.shp
M:\Directorates\Planning\08Plan\BDY.lyr

I want to change this to

M:\Directorates\Planning\Development Plan\city sector.lyr
M:\Directorates\Planning\Development Plan\city sector.shp
M:\Directorates\Planning\Planning Policy\Shapefiles\BDY.shp
M:\Directorates\Planning\08Plan\BDY.lyr

Basically I want ArcGIS Desktop to only search for data in M:\Directorates\Planning\ Every time ArcGIS tries to open an .mxd  that contains layer/shp/feature class files that had previously been located in M:\Planning\ or F:\ it will instead look in M:\Directorates\Planning\

Is there a way this can be done?

Thanks

jskinner

Hi thanks very much for the reply.
Could I use that script with the following folder references removed so that all folders in M:\Planning\ and F:\ are replaced or do I have to do it by individual folder?

import arcpy, os from arcpy import env workspace = env.workspace = r"C:\Temp\Python"  mxdList = arcpy.ListFiles("*.mxd")  for mxd in mxdList:     mxd2 = workspace + os.sep + mxd     mapdoc = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(mxd2)     mapdoc.findAndReplaceWorkspacePaths(r"M:\Planning\", r"M:\Directorates\Planning\")     mapdoc.findAndReplaceWorkspacePaths(r"F:\", r"M:\Directorates\Planning\")     mapdoc.save()  del mapdoc

Also do I have to enter that script into all current .mxd files or can it be entered directly into ArcGIS just once?

Thanks again

Yes, this is possible, but takes a little bit more coding.  Here's an example:

import arcpy, os from arcpy import env from arcpy import mapping workspace = env.workspace = r"F:"  mxdList = arcpy.ListFiles("*.mxd")  for mxd in mxdList:     mxd2 = workspace + os.sep + mxd     mapdoc = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(mxd2)     for df in mapping.ListDataFrames(mapdoc):         for layer in mapping.ListLayers(mxd, "", df):             if "F:\\" in layer.dataSource:                 origPath = layer.dataSource.split("\\")                 origPath2 = ""                 for x in origPath[0:-1]:                     origPath2 += x + os.sep                 origPath2 = origPath2[0:-1]                 dataSource = layer.dataSource.strip("F:\\")                 dataSource = dataSource.split("\\")                 path = ""                 for y in dataSource[0:-1]:                     path += y + os.sep                 path = path[0:-1]                 mapdoc.findAndReplaceWorkspacePaths(origPath2, r"M:\Directorates\Planning" + os.sep + path)             elif "M:\\Planning\\" in layer.dataSource:                 origPath = layer.dataSource.split("\\")                 origPath2 = ""                 for x in origPath[0:-1]:                     origPath2 += x + os.sep                 origPath2 = origPath2[0:-1]                 dataSource = layer.dataSource.strip("M:\\Planning\\")                 dataSource = dataSource.split("\\")                 path = ""                 for y in dataSource[0:-1]:                     path += y + os.sep                 path = path[0:-1]                 mapdoc.findAndReplaceWorkspacePaths(origPath2, r"M:\Directorates\Planning" + os.sep + path)     mapdoc.save()  del mapdoc

I have not tested this extensively, but had a similar version of this script work successfully.  Also, this will need to be only executed once.  The script will loop through all MXDs in the workspace directory:

workspace = env.workspace = r"F:"

In the above example, it will find all the MXDs on the F drive.  You can update this to the folder location where your MXDs are.