Package Project > Share outside of organization: option to keep public feature services as references

[wayfaringrob]

I have been asked to package up and share a project I've been working on but found that my theoretically small project packages up to over 70GB -- why? It's converting all my feature services to .gdb, which it doesn't really need to do.

I really only need my local data & UNC paths to be packaged and leave all the web layers as references. If there could be some extra toggles to specify just that, it would be very welcome. It could check sharing on the web layers, and if it's public, don't convert it. Keep it as a server reference. The current setup (convert everything) should be kept as an option. But sharing and unpacking a 70GB file is just not going to work.

[BrianRobeson]

I'd take it one step further and allow excluding feature services regardless of whether the feature service is public.  In my use case, I know the intended recipient has access to private feature services.  I routinely share project folders as zip files specifically to work around this issue.  

[wayfaringrob]

@BrianRobeson  good point. The current situation is just silly.