ArcGIS Pro 3.0 won't remove locators from project

[DavidColey]

Hello - I keep removing locator files\objects that no longer exist (the ones that show a red !) from the Catalog pane in Pro 3.0 by right-click>remove from project. 

But the locator files keep re-appearing no matter how many times  I remove them.  As a result, every time I try to switch to another project without exiting Pro first, I get an 'Invalid Locator' warning box that will not close no matter how many times I click it forcing a shutdown of Pro from Task Manager:

[DavidColey]

Yeah that happened to me too.  Something about the way the 2x aprx file keeps pointing to older locator directories that I had built at various 2x releases.  Since not all of my projects had the locators from the file directories loaded into them, for those projects I didn't get the errors after a 'save' to 3x

[SheriNorton]

Same issue for several of our Pro projects. Drives me nuts - have to clear the Invalid Locator message 5-6 times before the project will load. Repeatedly removed the problematic locator, but a refresh of the Locators simply pops it right back into the list. 🙄

[ShanaBritt]

@SheriNorton ,

When you remove the older locators from your project do you save the project before refreshing the Locators folder?

[SheriNorton]

Hi @ShanaBritt - I did try that as well, but this still continues to repopulate the problematic locator. I'll have to submit a case formally to ESRI tech for troubleshooting.

[ShanaBritt]

@SheriNorton When you submit the case to Support provide as much info about the creation of the project initially (version of Pro the project created in, number of maps in the project), where the locators are stored that are referenced in the project and everything that you've tried to remove and persist the removal of the locators in the projects. I've not been able to reproduce the behavior in-house, so it would be helpful in finding a better solution/workaround to the issue.

The locators added to the project are linked to the maps in the project as you can have multiple maps that have different locators enabled in them. If your project has multiple maps, check the Locate pane provider settings when each map is the active view to see if there are still any references. 

[AnonymousUser23]

APRX's hold a lot of bloat. It you break one open by unzipping you can find old links, including locators. This is not fixed by packaging. I have had to copy maps over to a new APRX to remove bloated Links and Locators. Fixed a lot of issues. 

[JoshWhite]

I just want to delete these problem locators as I just use the World Geocoding Service for everything.  And Yet every time I remove the locators, they just come back along with the annoying errors.  Is my only solution to do what @AnonymousUser23 suggested?  This has been going on for a couple of years through several Pro updates and it still isn't fixed.