Attachment list

1042
17
01-12-2012 07:50 AM
Status: Open
LaurenSturm
Occasional Contributor
When attaching documents to features, there is no way (that I know of) to see a list of the files you have attached. This would be very helpful when attaching several hundred files. 
Tags (1)
17 Comments
ChrisFox
Attachments are managed using a composite relationship class to a table in the Geodatabase. To get a list you can open the related table and it will show you all the attachments for that feature class and contain the related feature's Object ID. You can use this to list the attachements for specific features.
LaurenSturm
Chris,
     Thank you for your help. How would I go about creating that attachment table? I have the attribute table of the shapefile open and I do not see where to go to view the table of the attached hyperlinks. Let me know what you think! Thanks!
ChrisFox
Lauren,

I was under the impression you were working with attachments available only in the Geodatabase. This functionality is not available to shapefiles. When you say attachments what exactly do you mean? Are you talking about setting a field to contain url or paths to documents as a hyperlink?
LaurenSturm
I am referring to paths to documents as a hyperlink attached to features. For instance, I have a map of a sewer system and each manhole has PDF attached to it. I would like to see a list of all the attached documents on the manholes. 

ChrisFox
In ArcMap, right-click the field that contains the hyperlink paths to the PDFs and select summarize, specify the output location of the table and click ok. This will produce a table with all the unique hyperlinks used for the shapefile.
LaurenSturm
I just attempted the process you suggested and I do not have "summarize" as an option when I right click on the field. I know what you are talking about. I have seen that before but I do not have it on this one.
ChrisFox
Are you maintaining the hyperlinks using the Support Hyperlinks using field option in the layer properties, or by going through the identify window and adding hyperlinks? If you are using the field option, what data type is the field?
LaurenSturm
I am identifying each structure and attaching the appropriate documents. 
LaurenSturm
I use the following process:
 - Identify
 - right click in the Identify dialog box
 - Attach Hyperlink
 - Navigate to the document
 - Open
 - okay
ChrisFox
Unfortunately when your hyperlinks are maintained this way there is no out of the box solution to get a list of the hyperlinked documents for the layer. I would also caution you if you are you are maintaining hyperlinks in this way when the underlying data is a Shapefile. In the help it says the following:

http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//00s500000004000000.htm

After deleting features from a shapefile, you may find that dynamic hyperlinks are attached to different features. This occurs because ArcMap uses the feature ID (FID) field to associate dynamic hyperlinks with features, but the FIDs of shapefiles must be recalculated when features are deleted. To ensure hyperlinks are always associated with the proper features, only use dynamic hyperlinks with geodatabase features classes (geodatabase features always have unique ID values). Field-based hyperlinks can be used with shapefiles without this limitation.