Export attribute table to excel with photo attachments

[NicholasMartin1]

I am using Collector on a project that relies heavily on photo attachments. Viewing the photographs of collected data points in ArcGIS Online is working well, but I also want to share these photo attachments in other formats.

Specifically, I want to export an attribute table to a spreadsheet with photo attachments viewable on the spreadsheet (or create a report from ArcMap with these photo attachments). I also would like to be able to share feature classes in ArcMap that include photograph attachments. However, I haven’t figured out how to achieve either.

When I export ArcGIS Online feature classes to ArcGIS for desktop, the attachments are viewable in the attachment manager for each point. If I try to export the feature class to share with another party, however, the attachments are lost. Similarly, when I export the attribute table to a spreadsheet the photos aren’t viewable.

So I have two questions:

1. 1) Is it possible to easily share feature classes in ArcGIS that include photo attachments?
2. 2) Is it possible to include photo attachments when I export an attribute table to a spreadsheet?

Any help or guidance is appreciated. Thank you!

[JessicaThompson]

Were you able to get multiple pictures to show up?

I keep getting this error.

[AlinaTaus]

Hi Jessica,

I can get more than one attachment but I can only show one per asset in the report. So in the second picture that I posted above you can see the same asset (Facility ID= 1221) shows up twice in the report because there are two attachments for that one asset. 

Does your report run if you only have one attachment?

Alina 

[JessicaThompson]

So, you did your join to your attachment table?  How did you get them to show up?  I have up to 4 pictures per point...

That did work!

Thanks!

[AlinaTaus]

Yes, I joined the feature class to the attachment table to accommodate for the Many-to-one relationship.

Then I exported to a new table and added a new text field. I used field calculator:

"<Common path to the folder that stores your exported attachments after running the script" & [ATT_NAME]

So your full path will look something like: \\C\Data\Photos\Photo1.jpg

Another thing I did was modify the script so that the Asset ID would be included in the name of the exported attachment. So instead of Photo1.jpg I had 1234_Photo1.jpg 

The AssetID is stored in my feature class so that field comes over when I create the join. Then the expression looks something like:

<Common path> & [ASSETID] & "_" & [ATT_NAME]

\\C\Data\Photos\1234_Phto1.jpg

Hope this helps!

Alina

[TJKeiran1]

Hi Alina,

Thanks for providing direction on using the attachment manager reporting capabilities.  Were you successful in getting all attachments associated with one record to show up as one report item? 

[AlinaTaus]

Hi TJ,

No, unfortunately I have not been able to figure that out. If I do, I will make sure to post the solution here. 

Alina 

[PascualBenito]

@Alina.Taus: With regards to getting multiple attachments to display I saw in the Report Designer documentation that you can have sub-reports based on related records:

Reports can have multiple related reports, and likewise, you can include related reports within another related report (as long as the data source participates in a relationship).

Source: ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)

So I was thinking that perhaps you can figure out way to have your photo URL's structured as  1-to-many related records as opposed to a 1-to-1 join and then have each photo show up as a sub-report within the main report for each feature.  (I have not done this and have not seen an example of how the related reports appear on the page.... so really this is just a possible approach that you could look into).

[AlinaTaus]

Hi Pascual,

Thank you for the suggestion, I will have to look into that.

Alina