topic Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features in ArcGIS Pro Questions

ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

jbcypreste — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 18:51:22 GMT

There's a polygon datased I need to clean before creating my map. It's not a big dataset, under 10 MB.

When I load my project, I can delete one polygon, or a group of polygons I have selected. A few times anyway. After a few edits, it just decides to stay in the "deleting selected features" forever. This happens even if I delete one by one. I tried saving edits, saving project, closing edit and saving project again between each deletion, but it doesn't work. I'm not working with any encumbering dataset in the project either. The only solution is nuking the whole application because it just won't respond. Ever.

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

wayfaringrob — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 20:03:27 GMT

I have similar issues in Pro constantly - deleting, copying, moving data all takes an insanely long amount of time. If I have more than a few edits, I'm going to ArcMap & ArcCatalog, which do these types of operations instantly.

Based on past experience, I have little faith that it'll be addressed, but you can upvote this idea: Speed up catalog operations, as benchmarked by Arc... - Esri Community

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

MichaelVolz — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 00:06:19 GMT

Do your machines meet ESRI's recommendations of 32GB of RAM? Have you tried these operations on a local data set to see if that makes a difference?

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

jbcypreste — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 12:30:28 GMT

Yes, mine is a lenovo thinkstation. I've been editing multi-gigabyte datasets from both local and network for a while with pro and it always worked okay.

ArcGIS pro also freezes forever sometimes when trying to save these edits.

The weird thing is this only happens on a specific map. If I load the same dataset on another map on the same project, it works fine. I've been doing this as a workaround.

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

Robert_LeClair — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 19:33:14 GMT

jbcypreste - it sounds like a corrupt *.aprx may be the culprit if you have no issues editing the feature class in a new *.aprx. To test, delete the corrupt map view, rebuild the map view, save your *.aprx, try the delete workflow again. What is the result?

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

wayfaringrob — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 15:02:33 GMT

I have trouble understanding why 32 GB of RAM should be required to simply rename or delete something that takes a negligible amount of time in a different program on the same machine...sounds more like an issue with the "Pro" software than the specs.

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

jbcypreste — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 16:09:13 GMT

Yes, it appears the map was the problem. I have also accomplished similar results on other projects that were very slow by saving as another aprx.

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

DougBrowning — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 23:28:57 GMT

Running into this today. Waited over an hour to just delete 86,000 records. Brand new map twice. I was able to calc a field in a few minutes.

Usually some of this caused by relates where a parent delete will go Null all the child keys on you - which it really should NOT do since it is a "unmanaged" relationship class.

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

SusanPollard — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 03:49:33 GMT

Deleting is the same ridiculously slow process that fails and wont do a calculate field either. I also have to revert to 10.8 desktop to undertake same processes that are quick. Using ArcGIS pro 3.5.2 on Lenovo and also have adequate processing power for 10.8 why not ArcGIS PRO. Selecting features is also painfully slow in PRO.

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

MikeVolz — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 15:26:54 GMT

Susan:

Are you performing the delete on local data or network data? If data is on network, can you try deleting the same data when it is stored locally to see if that makes a difference which might indicate a network issue?

Re: ArcGIS Pro taking forever to delete features

Robert_LeClair — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 21:57:06 GMT

@SusanPollard - adequate processing power for ArcMap is definitely not the same for ArcGIS Pro. Pro requires much more power than ArcMap. You may want to consider running this - SystemRequirementsLab - Client App - to see where your Lenovo PC stacks up with the system requirements. From there, we can continue troubleshooting.