topic Seeing all the files in a folder in Data Management Questions

Seeing all the files in a folder

Alfred_Baldenweck — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 15:42:14 GMT

Hi all,

I'm planning a huge cleanup of our office's GIS file structure.

Part of that cleanup is deleting unnecessary folders.

Right now, my workflow is to look at the folders in both Catalog and in normal File Explorer to determine whether they're actually empty or not; Catalog won't show PDFs, for example, but File Explorer can't show me GIS data in a clean way (Hello, 9 different files for 1 shapefile, and 100 files per file gdb.)

Is there a viewer that shows ALL the contents of a folder in a readable way?

Thanks!

Edit: I know I can script to check if a folder is empty, but I'm looking for a GUI solution.

Re: Seeing all the files in a folder

AlfredBaldenweck — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:40:18 GMT

I just posted an idea about this here: Add ability to show other file types in Catalog - Esri Community

Re: Seeing all the files in a folder

DanaNolan — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 16:01:24 GMT

So this is an ArcPro limitation. Do you have access to ArcMap? Because you can add lots of filetypes to ArcCatalog's display in ArcMap, including zips and PDFs.

I use 2 windows for cleanup and conversion: ArcCatalog and Windows. But it sounds like you have data and map output in the same folder. This "project" orientation makes cleanup much harder.

Re: Seeing all the files in a folder

AlfredBaldenweck — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 16:09:08 GMT

I was able to figure it out with ArcCatalog. Not sure why Esri didn't make it default functionality for Pro, but I guess that's why we have the Ideas forum.

https://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/latest/manage-data/using-arccatalog/using-arccatalog-options.htm

Re: Seeing all the files in a folder

RobertJost — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 02:03:20 GMT

Could you elaborate on folder structures that avoid the "project" orientation?

Re: Seeing all the files in a folder

DanaNolan — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 23:29:46 GMT

We keep data separate, organized at the top level or two by SDSFIE topics or in a few cases by owner. Layer files are kept with data.

Map projects and exported maps are also separate from one another. We can move map projects and output files easily, but moving data is always harder because of links.

Map projects and output are also organized by SDSFIE topic and owner, although those that are not meant to be permanent are usually stored in a "temporary" folder. I don't think there is any way to avoid some miscellaneous folders for maps or strange bits of data, especially with 3+ people creating them. I just periodically try to find better locations for them or to toss them.

Map projects that are more permanent (reusable) or that are good templates are stored higher up in the map project file folders. We often have an "older" and "one-off" and "testing" subfolders. We try to avoid updating these subfolder maps with new links or when software changes.

I also like keeping editing maps and some analysis maps separate from cartographic maps, not inside topic folders. They are too different and a little risky for anyone other than their creators or experienced analysts to use. They can be great documentation, though, because they can tell a story of how the data came to be, which is incredibly useful when cleaning up after a complex edit or analysis process. I start some of my editing maps over from scratch after major software or data changes (so they run better).