How can you save a copy of a layer so that it can be edited without affecting the original?

[AnthonyPodesto]

The problem I am running into is this: I have an infrastructure layer that I want to keep as-is.  I created a layer file from it with a different name and added it back into the map so I could delete some pipelines from it without affecting the original.  It still seems to delete from both layers, luckily I had a backup of a backup.  Any ideas as to what im doing wrong??

Thanks                             ArcGIS Pro

Anthony

[KoryKramer]

When you create/add a layer to a map, that layer is still pointing to a data source.  You can see that in the layer properties:

So I could create multiple layers from that same datasource, and as you've seen, if I am working with Layer1 and delete features, I'm deleting features from the datasource, meaning that if Layer2 and Layer3 are pointing to the same source, they will also have those features deleted.

Therefore, you would want to create a copy of the data itself (not just a layer) and work from the copy.

[AnthonyPodesto]

Thanks for the reply Kory.  So am I creating a new geodatabase? Sorry, I am still learning the field.

Thanks

[JoeBorgione · Accepted solution]

Take a look here and here and here...

[AGMAD]

Here is what I have been doing. This is in ArcPro

right click the layer you want

click data

then export features

then save it as something different than the original layer

This has been working for me. Even if I open a feature service from one of my web maps in arcpro. 

[AnthonyPodesto]

I thought I was doing this, but I don't know where I went wrong.  Either way, each response helped me get it figured out. Thank You Everyone