Replace a data source in List By Source tab

[AndrewBarker3]

Inside the table of contents there's an under utilised tab, the List by Source tab.  The reason, I feel, it is under utilised is because you can't do a lot with it, other than see the sources of your data.  There's no real control or editing to be done here.

I think it'd be great if you could right click on a datasource and choose 'repoint source'.  Often in production environments you load data first into a replica working geodatabase, being able to quickly swap this to the production database would be fantastic.  

If it was smart enough to match the layers that are in both and leave, unchanged, non-matching layers, that would be great too.  

It would also be great to 'export list of layers and sources to file' - essentially exposing this function: https://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000011530 but allowing the user to save a table or text file. 

[KoryKramer]

This really is a duplicate of some other existing ideas; it's just specifying how and where it should be done in the UI.

Need Ability to Replace Data Source for Multiple Layers  (Edit: implemented in ArcGIS Pro 2.6)

Change datasource in Pro (Edit: implemented in ArcGIS Pro 2.6)

Advanced Data Source Management 

[AndrewBarker3]

Thanks Kory.

One of those ideas is from 2010 and has 84 votes, forgive me for thinking it wasn't for relevant software or seemingly on an implementation plan.  

[Brian_McLeer]

When viewing data in the table of contents under the 'List by Data Source' option, having the ability to batch change data sources would be efficient. For example, changing the data source from a database role that has editing privileges to a reader connection. Another example would be changing data from a parent database to a child database. Being able to right-click and say "change data source" would be helpful for a group of data rather than going into each layer's properties and changing the data source that way. 

[David_Brooks]

You can do this already if you open the Catalog view pane, then select your map, and select Data Sources from the top menu. Then if you select Workspaces as your data view, you can see all the databases and folders for your data, and change them en masse. 👍

[MichaelVolz]

Depends on whether data is in an enterprise database in a feature dataset as there is a bug with this scenario and the Workspace mode.

[KoryKramer]

@Brian_McLeer make sure to add your support for this idea by giving it kudos.

[Brian_McLeer]

@MichaelVolz  , I had the same issue with working in an enterprise database. It did at least break the links in batch so I could redirect to a different workspace all at once. 

@KoryKramer , thank you for the follow-up, I will be sure to kudos to the idea. 

[ZorbaConlen1]

@David_Brooks Thanks for the tip. I had mixed results with this. For some maps, it worked. For others, it broke the datasource link so that I now see a red exclamation mark, which as Brian pointed out is useful as I'm not able to fix the broken links in a batch task.

Also, to esri: even if this method worked consistently, it's not great just because of how un-intuitive it is. It took me multiple attempts and a lot of trial and error before I figured out how to do it. So, I think the original idea (allow this capability via the 'data source' interface in the contents pane) is better. Maybe I'm missing an easier way?

Thanks