Separate 'Clear Selection' and 'Delete Selection' buttons in ArcGIS Pro's UI
This has been bugging me about the ArcGIS Pro UI. The Clear Selection and Delete Selection buttons are right next to each other in the Attribute Table (first screenshot) as well as the Attribute Editor context menu. It seems too easy to click the wrong one (I have done it, luckily I realized quickly and could rebuild the missing data). I'm using feature services so there is no option to discard edits later. I worry this is even more confusing for less experiences users.
Separating the buttons would help, at least making it harder to accidentally click the wrong one. I like the larger X icon from the attribute menu & ribbon, vs the less distinguishable icon in the table editor. The arrangement in the ribbon is also better where the delete button is removed from the selection tab. I never feel I'll accidentally click delete here.
@Kory, this is still not implemented in 2.5.0. Is there any process to escalate this issue?? It's a much needed change with a vertical bar between the others.
Thank you for looking into it.
Hi Jake,
There is not a process to escalate an idea. The site is designed to allow the user community to vote on new or changed features/functionality that they would like to see - and then product teams use this information to inform development priorities.
That said, since the concern is about data integrity (I don't want to unintentionally delete records), the original use case about working with hosted feature services that did not support undo/redo, should be improved/resolved now in Pro 2.5.
If the ability to undo an unintentional delete is not enough, there will be an added level of protection coming in 2.6 where users will be able to require an explicit start of an edit session, so instead of having Clear and Delete both active, you will see this (I haven't started editing, so Delete is not enabled):
If there is a business justification that makes this a high priority, an issue could be logged through Technical Support at which point there would be avenues to escalate it.
I hope this helps!
While there is no current plan to change the order or location of buttons in the UI, in ArcGIS Pro 2.9 (scheduled for release in Q4 2021) there will be a prompt that will allow the user to confirm the delete.
For workspaces that allow Undo, the user will still be able to Discard the edit, even after clicking Yes to confirm the delete. For workspaces that do not allow Undo, as mentioned in some of the comments, this will be a safeguard to protect users from inadvertently deleting data that cannot be recovered, which seems to be the primary concern with this idea.
Preview:
