idea Improve error message in Aggregate Multidimensional Raster tool in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Improve error message in Aggregate Multidimensional Raster tool

DuncanHornby — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:51:47 GMT

I've just wasted hours of my life because this tool does not return a helpful error message. I was trying to aggregate chlorophyll-a data in this living atlas multidimensional datasets. I'm aggregating over user defined time ranges and the tool bombs out returning this error message

Failed to execute. Parameters are not valid.
ERROR 000800: The value is not a member of 2002-07-04T00:00:00 | 2002-07-05T00:00:00 | 2002-07-06T00:00:00 | 2002-07-07T00:00:00 | 2002-07-08T00:00:00 | 2002-07-09T00:00:00 | 2002-07-10T00:00:00 | 2002-07-11T00:00:00 | 2002-07-12T00:00:00 | 2002-07-13T00:00:00 | 2002-07-14T00:00:00 | 2002-07-15T00:00:00 | 2002-07-16T00:00:00 | 2002-07-17T00:00:00 | 2002-07-18T00:00:00 | 2002-07-19T00:00:00 | 2002-07-20T00:00:00 | 2002-07-21T00:00:00 | 2002-07-22T00:00:00 | 2002-07-23T00:00:00 | 2002-07-24T00:00:00.......

Now you might say, well its obvious, one of your parameters is not in the date list.

Well I'm being very kind to you by not showing you the 4000 or so other lines in this error message! Every date since July 2002!

So the error message says my date is not in list of valid values, but which is it!!!!

The tools error message needs to state at the top which input value is missing from the accepted list not just say a value is missing. Multidimensional datasets are very large!

I've had to spend several hours to track down that the multidimensional data is actually missing some dates and it was just really bad luck for me that I happen to have chosen one of these missing dates.

I hope someone from esri contacts the oceans team and points this out to them, as users need to be made aware that this dataset that is an an Authoritative dataset on living atlas is actually incomplete! For the record I discovered that 2020-06-29 and what was the killer for me 2020-07-01 are missing, there may be more?

Re: Improve error message in Aggregate Multidimensional Raster tool

BBicking1 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:32:33 GMT

Thanks much, Duncan, for your feedback!
The tool owners for both, the IA and the RA version of the tool have been notified.

Re: Improve error message in Aggregate Multidimensional Raster tool

DuncanHornby — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:44:52 GMT

@BBicking1 - Much appreciated!

Re: Improve error message in Aggregate Multidimensional Raster tool

Keith-VanGraafeiland — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:35:41 GMT

Hi @DuncanHornby - we were responsive to the questions you posted on the layer... and you indicated you found a way forward...

In terms of the "missing data"...The Living Atlas harvests data from the actual data providers, so in this case NASA MODIS; where the archive would be incomplete that we pull from... this is not our doing.

In terms of aggregation you are trying to preform... the tool you are using states "Supported multidimensional raster datasets include Cloud Raster Format (CRF), multidimensional mosaic datasets, or multidimensional raster layers generated by netCDF, GRIB, or HDF format files."

I hope this helps

Re: Improve error message in Aggregate Multidimensional Raster tool

DuncanHornby — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:20:59 GMT

@Keith-VanGraafeiland thank you for confirming the source of the missing data is NASA and not an error in the processing chain. I still think you should update the metadata for this Authoritative dataset to say that it is incomplete and especially the team behind the aggregate tool to improve error messaging.

With regards to the inputs to the aggregate tool, I point you to the comments for the dataset, you'll see I was having difficultly in preparing a subset of the data in crf format. I was not trying to directly process an image service. It is useful for others reading this idea to hammer home the input data type.