need to know which mxds are pointing to a certain source path...

Question

Hello there.

We have a vast amount of mxds, and my goal is to search that entire drive and find out which mxds have layers that are referencing a specific source path.  Then I would like to know how to replace that specific source path with the new source path.

I would presume that this would require a python script.  All of the scripts I've found so far require that I know the name of the particular mxd in question.  I'm trying to scan all of the mxds in the drive.

Thanks,

Kirsten

XanderBakker · Answer

According to the Help you should be able to use arcpy.da.Walk to loop through the mxd files in a folder (and subfolders):

import arcpy
import os

workspace = r"D:\Xander\GeoNet"
walk = arcpy.da.Walk(workspace, datatype="Map")
for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in walk:
    for filename in filenames:
        mxdfile = os.path.join(dirpath, filename)

... but when I tried it didn't give me any result.

However, you can use:

import arcpy
import os
import fnmatch

directory = r"D:\Xander\GeoNet"
pattern = "*.mxd"
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for filename in fnmatch.filter(files, pattern):
        mxdfile = os.path.join(root, filename)
        print "mxd file: {0}".format(mxdfile)

mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(mxdfile)
        dfs = arcpy.mapping.ListDataFrames(mxd)
        for df in dfs:
            print " - data frame: {0}".format(df.name)
            for lyr in arcpy.mapping.ListLayers(mxd, data_frame=df):
                print "   - layer name: {0}".format(lyr.name)

... to loop through the mxd's, the data frames and layers within the dataframes.

To update any datasource I recommend you to read this page of the Help: ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)

DarrenWiens2 · Answer

Refer to the arcpy.mapping help.

KirstenJohnson · Answer

Thanks for that.  So I now how to get a list of mxds, but I need to know which ones have data layers that are pointing to a certain path.  Then I need to replace the paths in those mxds with a new path.