topic Re: Coordinate system randomly changes. in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Coordinate system randomly changes.

LanceCole — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 14:07:52 GMT

Has any noted the map coordinate system randomly changing in ArcGIS Pro when editing data related to data-driven pages? If you disable the map series there is no issue but if the map series is enabled and you edit the page data driving the series the map coordinate system will randomly change to something totally non-related. Maybe a bug but thought I would post here first.

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

Hala_Ghareeb — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 15:01:56 GMT

Hi @LanceCole,

There are some checks are needed to unify the coordinate system for all the layers and outputs

1- Maybe your layers have a different coordinate system than the map itself, so please check the coordinate system for the map and the layers to be edited.

2- Simply, you could define the desired coordinate system "Output Coordinate System" from environment settings from the analysis tab as in the image below 👇

Please try these checks and let me know the results.

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

AdrianWelsh — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 21:17:24 GMT

Lance, what version of Pro are you running? I do editing in my map series in pro quite a bit and have not had the issue of the coordinate system changing on me. One thing I have to make sure of is that I am "clicked" in the right map on my layout. Sometimes I'll accidentally click on my "inset" map which is usually in web mercator, so I'll have to remember to click on my main map (clicking it makes it the active map). Also, in the map series properties, do you have a Spatial Reference field defined?

This could be causing issues too.

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

LanceCole — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 21:29:55 GMT

@Hala_Ghareeb ,

Thanks for the input. I have not had a chance to try your possible solution was we are under a deadline to get this out today.

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

LanceCole — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 21:55:05 GMT

@AdrianWelsh ,

We are running ArcGIS Pro 3.0.3.

We currently do not have a spatial reference field included in our dataset for this map series. I assume this would be a WKID value? All of the data and maps are in the same coordinate system and everything works fine as long as you do not edit the Index Layer data while the map series is enabled. When you do, the map coordinate system will randomly change to an unrelated coordinate system.

As I noted in @Hala_Ghareeb post we are under a deadline to get this data published today but I will try your solutions in more depth tomorrow.

Thanks again for your input.

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

AdrianWelsh — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 22:19:00 GMT

Thanks for the feedback. I really have not tried using the Spatial Reference selector so I am not sure if it's a WKID or some sort of projection string. One question, how do you know that the coordinate system is changing on you and when does it change? Are all your layers in the same coordinate system for this particular map?

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

LanceCole — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 22:59:19 GMT

While editing the index layer data that drives the dynamic data pages the map will just disappear from the screen. It took a little time to troubleshoot the issue the first time but we found the project Map coordinate system had changed from NAD83/86 to some coordinate system I had never heard of before. Reset the map coordinate system back to NAD83/86 and everything works as long as you do not edit the data. If you disable map series before trying to edit the data, the issue does not occur.

All feature classes and the basemap imagery are in the same coordinate system in this project.

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

AdrianWelsh — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 23:05:03 GMT

Wow, that is one of the strangest things I have heard regarding this. How weird for it to switch like that! I wonder if @KoryKramer has ever come across this.

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

ttencer — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 12:56:31 GMT

thank you, It helped me to understand why Im constantly in Projected Coordinate System Anguilla 1957 British West Indies Grid (WKID 2000) instead of render symbols in 1:2000:)

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

LanceCole — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 13:52:16 GMT

We ended up rebuilding the project and this seems to have resolved the issue. The project was originally created in an older version of ArcGIS Pro 2.x and we are now running 3.1.

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

JR_CHN — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 18:33:02 GMT

I have same issue but with an extremely simple project where I am training another staff member about setting up a Map Series, so all we have are the base ESRI basemap, and a polygon layer that is being used to drive the Map Series. The polygon layer has 2 attribute fields, one for map name and one for map scale.

We have made 3 polygons, given them all names, and given 2 a map scale of 1:1000 and one a scale of 1:2000

We then made a Map Series based off spatial and set the options to use the reference scale field for sorting out extent. Coordinate system for the map is BC Albers, same for the feature class driving the Map Series.

However, when finishing the setup and clicking on the map series pages in the Contents menu, the map recenters to somewhere near madagascar and at a scale of over 7 million in a completely unrelated coordinate system. I can re-open the map properties and re-set the coordinate system to BC Albers, and then click on a map series page and it works properly sometimes once, but clicking on another page again resets the coordinate system to something completely unrelated. Map series reference scale field was turned on and pointed to the map scale attribute.

We turned off using the map reference scale attribute to drive scale but no change. Also noticed when reference scale is turned on and it is using the map scale attribute to drive the map series extent, that the scale in the main map window does switch to the proper scale very briefly before changing to the 7 million+ scale and recentering to the same madagascar area.

Currently rebuilding the project to see if it fixes the issue, and will then troubleshoot the reference scale option setting to see if that helps, but so far this bug has totally confused the educational process on how to set up map series'!

Re: Coordinate system randomly changes.

AlexHirth — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 01:29:54 GMT

Thanks. I too set Spatial Reference instead of Extent to a field at the end of a sick day here and could not figure out what I did wrong. Easy to fix, but endlessly frustrating mistake.