idea Catalog Expand to Open Folder in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Catalog Expand to Open Folder

Meg_Southee_WCS — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 21:54:26 GMT

In ArcPro, add the ability to expand to the open folder in the Contents Pane when you click on an item in the Catalog View. This functionality exists in ArcGIS Catalog and in Microsoft File Explorer. Adding this feature to ArcPro would help with content management, and navigating the data structure.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

KoryKramer — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 22:25:40 GMT

Thank you for submitting this idea @Meg_Southee_WCS !

At first it wasn't really clear to me what you were requesting (not your fault, just hard to describe the idea precisely with words only). So after poking around a bit in file explorer, ArcCatalog and ArcGIS Pro Catalog View, I thought I'd post a .gif comparing the behavior in ArcCatalog vs. Catalog View. I believe this is what you're referring to, correct?

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

Meg_Southee_WCS — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 14:11:23 GMT

Thank you for providing the GIF. Yes, this is the functionality that I am requesting to be developed.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder - Status changed to: Under Consideration

NaicongLi — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 02:18:08 GMT

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

AndrewWillingale — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 16:42:43 GMT

I'm trying to migrate to using Pro for everyday tasks. Today I'm doing some basic data management and hit this issue and thought I was missing something.

I'm shocked that we're at this stage in the development of Pro and we need to point out that the Contents pane should expand when interacting with the Catalog pane.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

AndrewWillingale — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 15:30:31 GMT

@KoryKramer @NaicongLi

Hi. Is there any progress with adding this functionality to Pro since the idea became Under Consideration a year ago? Thanks.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

KoryKramer — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 21:42:50 GMT

Hi @AndrewWillingale the Under Consideration status is correct - the team has an issue for this request in their backlog but it has not yet been prioritized into a release. I'm sorry that I don't have more information to offer at this time, but when this is included in a release plan, we will be sure to move the idea to In Product Plan.

See ArcGIS Idea Statuses for more information.

Thank you

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

Meg_Southee_WCS — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 21:49:49 GMT

I was disappointed that this wasn't implemented in the latest version of ArcGIS Pro. It seems like a pretty easy functionality to add. @KoryKramer

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

BillLotz — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 13:33:28 GMT

Add 1 more frustrated user, little things like this are what had been behind my reluctance to fully embrace/adopt ArcGIS Pro.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

wayfaringrob — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 15:25:07 GMT

Hi - it seems that this idea would address about half of the issue with the contents tree not expanding and am wondering if I need to make another idea for what I'm about to describe - in ArcCatalog's catalog tree, you can expand things like geodatabases and folders to see their contents - shapefiles, feature classes, even custom extensions that you add like PDF. I like being able to expand things and navigate to my data in one spot; it's one of the many reasons I still use ArcCatalog. Sometimes it is convenient to view the contents of many folders at a glance, and Pro simply does not allow for this in the catalog view's TOC.

It may show a carrot initially to the left of a gdb, but clicking it doesn't expand it - it causes it to disappear.

You have to click the gdb (or folder containing shapefiles, for example), and view any contents in the actual catalog view area.

Confusingly, the carrot behaves as expected in the catalog pane, and you can view the child contents there. But not the view...which is supposed to be more fully featured than the pane.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

RMu — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 21:38:21 GMT

Add me to the list of incredulous users. Another example of form over function in ArcGIS Pro.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

KoryKramer — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 14:59:29 GMT

@RMu hit the Kudos button to add your vote. Thanks

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

Wolfgang_Grunberg_AZ_DFFM — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 20:54:36 GMT

Yes please - implementing this would be very helpful to me.

For me it is often faster to navigate in Windows Explorer and copy paste paths into ArcPro's Save and Open interfaces than doing it in ArcPro. Our data and product output locations are spread across multiple SharePoint (GIS workspaces) and Google Drive (outputs) shares.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

KoryKramer — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:24:05 GMT

Thank you for the comment @Wolfgang_Grunberg_AZ_DFFM Please add your support for this functionality by giving it kudos (a thumbs up).

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

SamPalmer — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 21:29:22 GMT

Yes Please!

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

wayfaringrob — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 22:48:47 GMT

Not sure if this is related, but when opening tables from Catalog view, the TOC unexpectedly becomes a massive waste of space, unless you manually click back up into the catalog portion. It's bad enough it doesn't expand to the files or show any contents, can the dang thing just stay put?

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder - Status changed to: In Product Plan

NaicongLi — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 16:18:43 GMT

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

Joey_Lecky — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 23:45:53 GMT

@Wolfgang_Grunberg_AZ_DFFM Yes agreed! Except yet another silly limitation of Pro compared to ArcMap and ArcCatalog, you can't paste paths directly to a file/dataset into 'catalog view' - that results in an error. You can only paste paths to folders or workspaces. And there is not ability to paste paths into the 'catalog pane' whatsoever.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder

NaicongLi — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 16:15:32 GMT

Hello @Meg_Southee_WCS, and everyone,

Thank you for your input. The functionality that you were requesting in this idea is implemented in ArcGIS Pro 3.2. In the Catalog view contents list, if you click a container (for example, a folder, or a file geodatabase, or a feature dataset) to browse into it, its parent container in the Catalog view Contents pane would be auto expanded (if it was not expanded already), with the this container selected.

(view in My Videos)

To use this functionality, you need to turn it on in the Options dialog, Catalog Browsing page, under Catalog view, Contents pane. It is turned off by default.

@wayfaringrob, the functionality implemented for @Meg_Southee_WCS's idea is different from what you were requesting in your first comment. But as you mentioned, you already entered a separate idea for it (thank you), and further comment can be entered directly in your idea at https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-ideas/expand-quot-layouts-quot-and-quot-locators-quot-in/idc-p/1197424. As to your second comment in this thread, about the empty Contents pane when you open a table, currently the Contents pane is no longer empty, showing some basic information about the table. This now is actually the Contents pane for the table view.

Thank you all again for your feedback.

Re: Catalog Expand to Open Folder - Status changed to: Implemented

NaicongLi — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 00:15:30 GMT