Cannot Export Map Series. Help!!!

[LeviCecil]

I'm exporting a 242 page Map Series to PDF. In 2.6.1, it says "export complete" almost immediately. I'm watching the destination folder continue to fill up long after this. This didn't happen in 2.5. Could it be a New BUG?

[LeviCecil]

And now it won't export at all. It's saying that the PDF (which does not exist yet) is open in another program. There aren't any other programs open. This issue persists after restarting the computer. I'm trying to export school floor plan maps for our city's first responders, so this is pretty critical. 

[TomBole · Accepted solution]

Hi Cecil, 

I have not run into an issue like this. My guess is that Pro "thinks" the file exists and is "open" and cannot be written to. This may, or may not be related to BUG-000132799 and the lack of progress when exporting to multiple PDFs.  Here are some possible workarounds. Unfortunately I cannot confirm that they will work because I cannot reproduce the issue you describe above.

• Save the files to a different location.
• Save the project as a new project (something could be wrong with the .aprx)
• Use arcpy.mp to export - MapSeries—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation (code samples are at the end)
• If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro you can export to a single PDF and then use Acrobat to split the single PDF into multiple PDFs

I have no idea if the issue causing BUG-000132799 is also causing your inability to export at all. I would treat this as a separate bug and report it to Technical Support. They can be contacted at https://support.esri.com/en/contact-tech-support. My guess is we will need steps/data to reproduce this.  I'll pass the screenshot you provided to my colleagues to see if anyone might know why this message might pop up if the PDF does not exist.

In the meantime, hopefully one of the workarounds above helps you get past the issue.

Tom

[TomBole]

Cecil, 

Try removing the colon from the file name. 

When I included a colon I got a similar message.

I'll enter a bug to improve this error message.

Tom

[EricBongelli]

Hi, 

Just thought I would chime in here. I had a similar issue when exporting a map series. I received the error message that the .pdf was open in another program when it did not exist. I did have a colon in my page name attribute, and I was exporting multiple PDF files with the page name as the suffix. When I removed the colon from my page name attribute for all records the export ran smoothly. 

I agree an improved error message here would be useful to flag an invalid file name. 

[LeviCecil]

Hey Tom, 

The colon is part of the page name. I tried saving to a new location and saving to a new aprx. Those steps didn't help. I will just split the pages in Acrobat for now. Thanks!

[Anonymous User]

Hi Levi,

I had a similar issue yesterday with just exporting a one-page layout, turns out one of the images on my map (the client logo) was causing the issue. I disabled that bit of the layout and it worked perfectly. Might be worth trying turning off elements to see if you can get it to work?

Side thing: I've been watching ArcGIS Pro "Creating map series" for 20 minutes now. It's only 7 pages based on bookmarks - is it normal for it to take that long?

[LeviCecil]

Hey Dave,

I just used the map series python script tools that Tom linked to, and it worked. I don't have any images in my layouts. 

[LeviCecil]

This was supposed to be addressed at 2.7. Still having these issues.