What happened to My Toolboxes content when I upgraded to 10.4?

[deleted-user-zpcJw1u0IXiO]

As I was about to use a Model Builder model I created some time ago, I opened My Toolboxes and found it empty! This is the first time I tried accessing My Toolboxes since I upgraded from Desktop 10.3.1. to 10.4. Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution to share?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

do you remember where you "my toolboxes" folder was?

did you do a drive search using just the ... tbx ... file extension?

[deleted-user-zpcJw1u0IXiO]

Thanks Dan. I believe My Toolboxes is pulled from Toolbox.tbx, am I right? And I believe it was stored in H:\My Documents\ArcGIS\, because that's where the empty Toolbox.tbx is now, and it's also the location of Default.gdb which contains feature classes that date from prior to the 10.4 update. So it's puzzling that that content was maintained, but not my tools.

Yes I had searched on *.tbx on both C:\ and my My Documents location on H:\ and found only Toolbox.tbx in C:\Profile Backup\<my username>\Documents\ArcGIS, where it is a 4 KB file that is empty when I open it in ArcToolbox. On H:\ I found it only in a Pre-image info folder where it is last modified in 2013. I suppose that's better than nothing, but I do regret losing everything I've added to it in the years since.

What shocks me is this has even happened, because during all previous ArcGIS Desktop updates, I have never lost the content of My Toolboxes. Has anyone else lost their tools on this upgrade? So what am I left with: trying a file recovery tool to restore what the Desktop installation deleted? Is there any other solution?

[curtvprice · Accepted solution]

Justin,

When you create a toolbox in My Toolboxes it is created in your application folder, which can vary by Windows version but can always be found using the environment variable %APPDATA% - just open Windows Explorer and paste this in the address bar: %APPDATA%\Esri\Desktop10.3\ArcToolbox where "10.3" is your desktop version. This is where you other user-specific files are stored (see: Resetting your ArcGIS application profile​)

Many of these files get migrated, but I think it's best practice to start fresh so you have fresh templates, and if you want copy over just what you want to keep to the new folder (for example, your toolboxes and style files).

[deleted-user-zpcJw1u0IXiO]

Thank you Curtis! With your help I did find what I was missing, and it was in %APPDATA%\Esri\Desktop10.3\ArcToolbox as you suggested, because 10.3 was my previous desktop version. So I copy/pasted the content from there into %APPDATA%\Esri\Desktop10.4\ArcToolbox, and then found My Toolboxes fully populated once again.

Cheers,

Justin