Hi Scott,
This happened to me last in May and this is the response I received from ESRI after I provided the corrupt project. Is it worth opening up again? If so can you just reference my closed case number 02114618? Thanks
Hello Suzanne,
This is Sydney from Esri Support Services writing in regards to case 02114618. I apologize for the delay in following up with you!
Thank you so much for sending that project file. I did some pretty extensive testing with it and, unfortunately, I was also not able to open it in any version of ArcGIS Pro (including the most recent Pro 2.2 beta). We also have a method for inspecting the project files by attempting to unzip them with 7zip and check out the contents, but this was also unsuccessful as the project file wouldn't even unzip (a working project file would without issue). I suspect that this project has somehow become corrupted and you will need to rebuild it if you don't have a back up copy of it.
Please let me know if you have any questions about this! If you have any other questions or concerns, feel free to reach out and I'd be more than happy assist. As always, I can be reached by replying directly to this email or by calling Esri Support and referencing your case number.
Then I received this:
Hello Suzanne,
I looked over that error message we saw and it appears that at the end it's actually supposed to display a version number that the project was saved at (if it was actually saved with a newer version). Instead of displaying a version number like 2.0 or 2.2.1, all it shows is a single period. I did some research and it looks like other people had similar error messages when their project became corrupted.
Unfortunately, it's a little hard to pin down why exactly a project gets corrupted as it can be caused for a number of reasons. It can happen sometimes if ArcGIS Pro crashes, isn't shut down properly, if there's some kind of bug that causes the project to corrupt using a certain workflow (this seems to be very rare but I've heard of it happening), but it can also be caused by something like antivirus software (again, this is very rare). Thankfully, project corruption is usually pretty rare and not that many people run into frequent issues with it. Usually what I suggest is making sure that ArcGIS Pro is up-to-date, that the software is closed properly (when possible), that your antivirus software has exceptions for ArcGIS Pro, and that you back up any major projects to a safe location in case you need to restore. If projects continue to get corrupted, I would suggest at that point to start with a full uninstall/reinstall of ArcGIS Pro to see if that resolves the issue. I would also suggest reaching out to Esri Support if you do run into any suspected project corruption issues as we can dig into the project some more to try and recover data from it (the 7zip method I mentioned in my last email works in a lot of cases though not always).
Please let me know if you have any questions about this! I'm going to go ahead and close our case for now, but feel free to reach out if you have any other questions about this issue. As always, I can be reached by replying directly to this email or by calling Esri Support and referencing your case number.
Thank you,
Sydney
Esri Support Services
