ArcGIS Pro "Project not found" error, missing .aprx and toolbox.

DM_GISServices · ‎04-01-2020

Hello all,

I had a project I was working on in ArcGIS Pro earlier today in which I had a toolbox with a few models, a script, and FME tools. A few minutes after having closed out Pro, I re-opened it and tried to open the project from the "Recent Projects" link. I then got a "Project not found" error with the message (attachment included), "Sorry, we couldn't find your project. Do you want to remove the project shortcut from your list of recent projects?" Instead of removing it I navigated to the project in Windows Explorer and found the .aprx to be missing along with the toolbox in which I had been doing work. I had searched about this problem a year or two ago (a coworker experienced this problem) and was able to find that a couple people had run into this before, but searching now seems to bring no results. I wanted to ask you all - have you had this problem of ArcGIS Pro disappearing projects before and were you able to recover your projects without restoring previous versions of the project's parent folder? I have spent a long time working on this project and would like to avoid having to start even from a recovery point.

-Max

EDIT: Please post here if you have had this problem too! There does not seem to be a solution at this point, but the more people that can share their experiences having this problem the more likely we are to be able to find out where this problem is stemming.

WA_Holmes · ‎06-28-2023

This has happened to me a couple of times and I had to get my IT team to restore the files from backup. I'd forgotten about it until a less experienced colleague had the same thing happen today and now I'm worried given I've just migrated everyone else from ArcMap to Pro.

I don't know the exact cause but my gut feel is that at some point while a session was open, my computer lost connection to the network/VPN and although my computer recovered, ArcGIS Pro couldn't. It says it can't save, not even save as, so you quit and lose everything.

I possibly found a least worst scenario by force quitting ArcGIS Pro which means losing everything since the last save, but it didn't give Pro the opportunity to delete everything. I wouldn't put 100% faith in doing this but it seemed to work the last time it happened to me.

We're using version 3.1

KellyPilarski · ‎08-30-2023

We had the same situation today. The project errored on saving and closed when we went to go back the .aprx file was missing. Searched all drives on computer and server it is no longer there. All of the ancillary folders do exist, the database , Index and .backups all there, but the actual project is now gone.

Margaret_M_Maher · ‎08-30-2023

Regarding this issue of losing your ArcGIS Pro project and having the .aprx file disappear from the computer, if you have a Maintenance contract with Esri for software, please open a Technical Support case by calling 888-377-4575 and press 2 for Technical Support. Press 0 if you want to speak to a Receptionist, otherwise follow the phone tree.

If you do NOT have a Maintenance agreement go to https://support.esri.com/en-us/contact scroll down on the page and click "Report a bug".

PeterForister · ‎10-30-2023

Where are my projects going???

I've lost two significant project files in this way in the last week, and four overall in the past year. The .aprx file simply disappears from the project folder after closing ArcGIS. When reopening, the "project not found" message is displayed and the .aprx file is no longer in the project folder on my drive, despite not being moved or touched in any way between working sessions.

This is incredibly frustrating and demoralizing. The backup folders are empty, and the logs don't seem to have any useful info. I got smart and started manually exporting entire project packages every 2-3 days plus my normal backups, but the volume of work that occurs between those backup periods in non-trivial and this issue often wipes 5-10 hours of work.

Has any progress been made to diagnose or fix this issue from Esri? There's little useful troubleshooting information in this thread. At very least I'd like to know how to avoid it, whether that's structuring my project in a certain way or avoiding a certain shutdown sequence. At this point, the only safeguard I could come up with is backing up the entire project/data folder every hour - but that doesn't solve this issue.

LisaCasey · ‎06-17-2024

I have had his same issue - On my end I have noticed that this occurs since upgrading to Windows 11, and if I leave a project idle.

I was running a cache over the weekend. The cache finished building, (18+ hours) but I could not save the project file. I could not save even as a new project and when I closed the project file had erased. Also, no backup. I noticed that before closing, the project said "back up in progress". I suspect there is an issue with the operating system since, at least for me, this issue did not occur with windows 10.

One bright spot --- I was able to restore my .aprx file using the "previous versions" tab in windows file explorer: