topic ArcGIS Online Publishing Issue in ArcGIS Online Questions

ArcGIS Online Publishing Issue

HeatherECopeland — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 12:52:24 GMT

My colleague and I have been trying to share shapefiles (points and polygons) as web layers to our ArcGIS Online accounts but keep running into publishing issues. The end goal is to use these files to create storymaps but these publishing errors/issues are a major blocker.

Initially when I tried to share a shapefile as a web layer from ArcPro, it only let me publish as a service definition. Once the service definition is in my ArcGIS Online account, I'm unable to do anything with that service definition file. NOW when I try to share a shapefile as a web layer from ArcPro, it errors out with the message, "Failed to publish web layer." The log is completely unhelpful and basically just says the same error message.

I can upload a file as a shapefile to ArcGIS Online account but it won't let me publish that file from ArcGIS Online. The only error message I get is "There was an error while adding this item."

Does anybody know how to get around this?? My colleague is having the same issues so it appears to be either a problem with our ArcGIS Online organization or an ESRI-wide issue.

Re: ArcGIS Online Publishing Issue

MobiusSnake — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 13:24:03 GMT

Were the shapefiles originally created in ArcGIS Pro, and only edited in it?

If not, maybe try this:

Export an existing hosted feature layer you have as a shapefile
Download it
Attempt to publish it

If it works, then the issue could be with your shapefiles. I've seen shapefiles that were created in or edited in applications that didn't exactly conform to the shapefile specifications cause downstream issues (not exactly this, but similar).

[Edit] I tried uploading a zipped shapefile I created in Pro and it worked as expected.

Re: ArcGIS Online Publishing Issue

MichaelVolz — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 15:31:23 GMT

Do you have the proper permissions to publish to ArcGIS Online?

Can you load the shapefiles into a file geodatabase in ArcGIS Pro and then try to publish from the file geodatabase source?