topic Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip in Geoprocessing Questions

Error 000229 when trying to Clip

GIS1 — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:20:17 GMT

Hi friends,

I am experiencing a weird issue. We have a layer that seems fine. It is visible in our map and we are able to manipulate it in many ways. However, when trying to clip it out given a shapefile, we get the following error:

Error 000229 Cannot open blah blah blah

The ESRI help is not very helpful on this:
http://help.arcgis.com/EN/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00vp00000005000229.htm

Obviously, the data exists, we can see it on our map. Furthermore, performing the same clip on a different computer works just fine. It's just this one computer that seems to be experiencing this issue.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

MikeLintott — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 16:08:01 GMT

Same error here while exporting to CAD.
Anybody?

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

GIS1 — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:28:48 GMT

Getting this again, totally different computer and set of data. Error message and documentation is of no help trying to figure this one out...

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

RichardSlater1 — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 07:56:01 GMT

I'm getting this same error except when trying to merge datasets. It's very annoying and can't find any explanation for it. The data is added to arcmap, displays without issue and appears in the drop down list of the tool, but as soon as you run the tool it gives the error 000229. After the tool has failed, when ticking the layers on and off I get the red exclamation mark signalling a broken data link, but the source location is as it should be.

I managed to get the merge to work by exporting the datasets into a new gdb. Any ideas what the problem is though? Are the files corrupted in some way and are there other ways to resolve it?

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

MattSidor — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 21:32:26 GMT

I'm having the same problem with the Dissolve tool on a polygon feature class. Incredibly frustrating. ArcGIS Help files, as usual, provide no troubleshooting steps.

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

BrendanJackson — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:23:30 GMT

I was also having problems with this- I got the error message when trying to do an Erase.

After some playing around, I discovered that it had something to do with one of the features being in a file geodatabase, and the other a regular shapefile in a folder. I found that either importing the shapefile into the geodatabase, or exporting the geodatabase feature to a shapefile fixed the error.

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

BrentBrock — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:39:02 GMT

Add me to the users frustrated with this error. I've been plagued by it ever since upgrading to 10.1. I'm seeing it with pretty much any of the analysis tools (clip, erase, dissolve...). All inputs are shapefiles so I'm not seeing the same geodatabase issues as others. But it seems to have something to do with the way layers in the TOC are passed to tools. If you try to drag a layer from the TOC into the tool and it doesn't work, then you know you will get the error. But browsing to the shapefile on the file system instead of trying to input a TOC layer works. The other thing that works is to close and reopen the map doc, after which the tools work again for a little while and then stops again. Both work arounds are frustrating but at least browsing directly to the sources saves time over constantly restarting the mdx.

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

RandyMcGregor — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:35:28 GMT

Include me among the EXTREMELY frustrated. Also, I think it is new with 10.1. I'm getting it a LOT, when the layer is perfectly valid and points to a perfectly valid data source. I just sent a support request regarding it. In my particular situation (today), I'm getting it when rerunning results, but not when running the tool directly.

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

RandyMcGregor — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:59:25 GMT

I believe 10.1 has serious problems with feature layers.

Another issue I'm having is that if you move a layer from one data frame to another, tools do NOT work on it at all, the claim being that the layer does not exist. It is trying to access the layer in the data frame from which you copied the layer and since that frame isn't the active one, it can't access THAT layer. This I think is quite reproducible. When I move a data layer to a different data frame, I HAVE to rename it.

Also, and this is a very old problem that I had hoped would be fixed by now. If you have, say, three layers with the same name (I know... you shouldn't) and pick the third one as input into the tool, the tool process the first layer with that name. Not a bug, but something that reflects a certain, shall we say, lack of sophistication regarding the relationship between a particular layer and its associated data on disk.

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

RandyMcGregor — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:01:15 GMT

One more message.

This topic is very dear to my heart.

In some (all?!) cases, restarting the mxd makes it go away.

For awhile...

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

Robert_LeClair — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:36:28 GMT

One possibility for the Error 000229 code is after installing SP1 for Desktop Background Geoprocessing (64-bit) AND storing one's data in a Personal for MS Access geodatabase, the clip operation will fail. You may read more about this at: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//002100000040000000

If this is not the case, then I would recommend calling Esri Support Services (Desktop) to create an incident so that an analyst may resolve the error.

Regards,

Robert LeClair
Esri-Denver

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

JoshThompson1 — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:40:54 GMT

I suspect that this issue it may very well be related to how the layer is named in the ArcMap TOC. As a test, I would suggest trying to run the tool from ArcCatalog/ArcToolBox rather than running it from ArcMap. That way you will avoid any TOC layer name issues.

If you are successful with the ArcCatalog method, then the next test in debugging the error caused by running it through ArcMap would be to rename the layer in your TOC to something very simple.

Josh

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

gregmohler — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 19:52:55 GMT

What you get from esri:
"The data is not accessible. It is likely either invalid or not available."
I got this error from a permissions issue from an IDLE window (no arcmap/toolbox/catalog/toc). The SDE database connection doesn't give me access to view/edit/etc the feature classes, hence the not available error. Changing the path to something knowingly wrong gives the usual error000732:"...does not exist or not supported"
Also had problems at home with Windows being wonky about permissions.
edit: My admin guy just ran the script on the files I couldn't access

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

RobThomas — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:28:42 GMT

I've had this problem with clip, joins, and selections when performing geoprocessing in the Python Command Window. Everything runs fine in ArcGIS 10.0, so this is definitely a 10.1 bug. It occurred before and after installing SP1 for Desktop Background Geoprocessing (64-bit). The error occurs on shapefiles and feature classes (GDB). I can run some commands referencing a layer and have it work fine, close ArcMap, open later to run the same commands and receive the error...Sometimes the error would appear for a different layer that didn't give me a problem before. Nothing change in the TOC or with the layers. FRUSTRATING...

My workaround...Every time I received the error I was referencing a grouped layer. Being grouped didn't cause the problem, as it occasionally worked with the same grouped layer, but errors only occurred on a grouped layers. If I moved the layer outside of the group the errors always went away. I've tried several ways to reference the layer (e.g. r'GROUP\lyr', 'GROUP\lyr', 'lyr) but could not find a solution.

As someone else mentioned, sometimes restarting ArcMap helps too.

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

TimothyPierce — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 13:53:21 GMT

Running 10.1. First time encountering this problem for me. In this case, navigating to the feature classes for Input Features and Clip Features did the trick (as opposed to drag/drop or using drop-down menus). Thanks for the workaround, blbrock.

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

RandyMcGregor — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 14:27:22 GMT

I'm getting this same error except when trying to merge datasets. It's very annoying and can't find any explanation for it. The data is added to arcmap, displays without issue and appears in the drop down list of the tool, but as soon as you run the tool it gives the error 000229. After the tool has failed, when ticking the layers on and off I get the red exclamation mark signalling a broken data link, but the source location is as it should be.

I managed to get the merge to work by exporting the datasets into a new gdb. Any ideas what the problem is though? Are the files corrupted in some way and are there other ways to resolve it?

I get this error periodically, and I simply don't get it. The file that it "can't open" is perfectly fine, and it is not being editied, so a lock is not the issue (there should not be a lock on it, anyway). It cannot be used as an input. What would prevent a file from being usable as an input?

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

KieranParsons — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 22:12:09 GMT

I still receive this annoying, pointless, frustrating error message, when all I want to do it union two simple datasets.

Did anyone find a solution? Seems like ESRI won't help.

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

ChrisErtel — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 15:45:50 GMT

It has definitely got something to do with data being grouped in the TOC.

Come on ESRI, fix this!

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

EricaMcCormick — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 14:55:18 GMT

I tried many of the helpful and thoughtful suggestions here, but this one was the culprit for me (running 10.2). As soon as I moved them out of a group, Erase worked. Thanks for the troubleshooting!

I've had this problem with clip, joins, and selections when performing geoprocessing in the Python Command Window. Everything runs fine in ArcGIS 10.0, so this is definitely a 10.1 bug. It occurred before and after installing SP1 for Desktop Background Geoprocessing (64-bit). The error occurs on shapefiles and feature classes (GDB). I can run some commands referencing a layer and have it work fine, close ArcMap, open later to run the same commands and receive the error...Sometimes the error would appear for a different layer that didn't give me a problem before. Nothing change in the TOC or with the layers. FRUSTRATING...

My workaround...Every time I received the error I was referencing a grouped layer. Being grouped didn't cause the problem, as it occasionally worked with the same grouped layer, but errors only occurred on a grouped layers. If I moved the layer outside of the group the errors always went away. I've tried several ways to reference the layer (e.g. r'GROUP\lyr', 'GROUP\lyr', 'lyr) but could not find a solution.

As someone else mentioned, sometimes restarting ArcMap helps too.

Re: Error 000229 when trying to Clip

Anonymous User — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 22:28:28 GMT

I was getting the same error when trying to Clip. I turned off background processing and voila, no more error! Hope this can help someone!

Cheers,
Brendan