Transfer Attributes: source feature doesn't flash when source layer is selected in transfer attributes chip

[KerryAlley]

I just updated to Pro 3.52, and can't get the transfer attributes tool to work: When I click the source feature, snapping tips indicate I'm clicking correctly. The transfer attributes chip appears showing the target point layer and another editable line layer. However, when I select the target point layer in the source pop-up window, the entire screen flashes instead of the feature in the point layer that I selected. The full-screen flash is what I would expect to see if I had accidentally selected an imagery/raster layer. 

There's probably something obvious I've missed, but I can't for the life of me figure out what! 😅

[DanPatterson]

To be sure, did you reviewed the conditions set out in this?

Transfer attributes between features—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

[KerryAlley]

Yes, as far as I can tell, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

Does anyone who is familiar with the tool know if the full-screen flash is indicating that something isn't working right? 

[Scott_Harris · Accepted solution]

@KerryAlley I would not expect a full screen flash. I would have to see a video to be able to tell what could be going on. Esri Technical Support can capture this information if you think it's a bug.

If I was troubleshooting this, the first thing I would try is to check on the selectability and editability of the layers (see 1 and 2 in the image below). Source layers must be selectable .Target layers must be selectable and editable. I would then prune my list of editable layers down to only my intended target layer(s) (3 in the image below):

-Scott

[KerryAlley]

Thanks Scott!

It turns out that I did have one (out of about 30) of my imagery layer that was both visible and selectable. 🤦But I swear I checked for that very thing repeatedly (because of the nature of the flash), but it was buried so deep in group layers... My standard project for every-day editing has almost 400 layers (so that I can toggle on/off different group layers for different daily tasks). 

So... is it a bug that let the tool try to set an imagery layer as the source layer even though it wasn't one of the options in the source pop-up menu? If so, is it something that should be reported officially? 

[Scott_Harris]

@KerryAlley I'm not sure how that could happen. On my end, when I include a raster (tif) in my contents pane, it's automatically not selectable or editable - and therefore isn't a valid source or target for the Transfer Attributes tool:

I also don't see it doing any flashing on my end when I use the Transfer Attributes tool with my regular feature classes. Can you narrow down the type of imagery layer that was causing the issue for you?

[KerryAlley]

Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to exactly which imagery layer I made un-selectable to get things working yesterday, but many of the layers don't allow checking or unchecking as you said, so I'm guessing it was a cached or un-cached feature service. In order to test whether I could reproduce the issue, I made the non-cached service selectable and tried to do an attribute transfer...

The first thing I noticed is that the Source pop-up had rows showing the three symbols representing the layers I expected to see (the same that I saw yesterday when I couldn't get the attribute transfer to work), but unlike yesterday, the selectable imagery service was also listed... HOWEVER, the values in the symbol, Layer, and Feature columns of the Source pop-up were "scrambled" with respect to each other so that a point symbol was associated with a service layer, and a layer with point features showed an image from the service in the feature column:

When I made the imagery layer unselectable again (and not visible), the Source pop-up still had "remnants" of the service in the Feature column:

I'm not sure if I had a different imagery layer that was selectable yesterday, only that the pop-up window looked more or less like in the second image (it's possible I didn't notice the IMG reference in the Feature column yesterday). But I am sure that the attribute transfer worked as expected both yesterday and today only after making the imagery layer un-selectable.

Regarding the flashing, I'm used to seeing the source or target flash after being clicked with the transfer attributes tool because I was using an earlier version of Pro until this week, and I had crosshair flashing enabled for popups, so I wasn't surprised to see features flash when using the tool yesterday (even though I hadn't activated crosshair flashing yet), but I was surprised that it was flashing like I was selecting an image layer instead of a point feature from the pop-up menu. Today while testing the transfer tool, I think that sometimes I saw flashing and sometimes I didn't, but am not very sure about that. 

I've made the imagery layer selectable/un-selectable and visible/not-visible a few times with different combinations, and it seems to behave a little differently each time, possibly even with the same conditions (but I'm not completely sure of that).

After the tests mentioned above, I turned on crosshair flashing for pop-ups, but it's insane because now there are so many flashes that I can't tell what each flash is related to. Sometimes a feature even has a normal, non-crosshair flash. I'm working on an Azure virtual computer and a congested network so the delays for some flashes were rather confusing!

Apologies for not being more systematic in my testing, but at least it's sufficient to indicate that something is a bit odd. 

[KerryAlley]

Now the Source pop-up menu shows imagery layers, even with all of the imagery layers all set as un-selectable...at least I think they are all un-selectable, because I only see uncheckable items in the Selection TOC even after expanding all imagery group layers, and no imagery layers become selected when I use the select by rectangle tool. 

But the good news is that  now that I'm used to the "scrambled" menus, it's relatively easy click each item to find out which one flashes the intended source feature before double-clicking it, and that seems to be working reliably.  Interestingly, the target feature pop-up menu seems to be fine, without any traces of scrambling or imagery layers.

[Scott_Harris]

Hi @KerryAlley, 

I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble with the tool. My suggestions:

• If you have a requirement for using the Transfer Attributes tool that can't be resolved by using Copy/Paste Attributes in the Attributes Pane, perhaps the best solution is to turn off the imagery layers instead of trying to make them unselectable - I think some imagery layers have some kind of restriction on toggling the selectablility (I'm still researching that behavior).
• try using the Attributes pane to copy and paste attributes since it gives you more control over which features you are working with (step can be found here).  
• I will try out your workflow and report any issues to the development team, but if you run into other issues, feel free to reach out to Esri Technical Support