I am having new problems with creating and opening project templates. This issue seems to exist for both ArcGIS Pro 3.6.2 and 3.6.3.
I work on a team that references a lot of data and needs to make consistent map products. Project templates have been a great way for us to start a new project that has pre-loaded data contents, symbology styles, and map layouts. Nearly all of the pre-loaded data is stored in a single "master" geodatabase on our network drive. I make periodic updates to the master geodatabase, mostly to create new feature classes with updated data and then update the project template with the updated feature class(es) (such as new eBird occurrence data that we download and store on the master geodatabase). I manage two project templates, one with about 20 pre-loaded feature classes and one smaller one with a subset of about 10 pre-loaded feature classes. Each template has the same 4 symbology styles and 4 map layouts.
Last week, this process was disrupted, and I'm struggling to figure out why. Here is what changed:
- The processing time to create a project template went up substantially from a few minutes to nearly 2 hours (see Project_Template_Job_Status attachment)
- When the "create project template" job (packaging and compression of the project) finally finishes, the .aptx project template file size is about 4 GB, up substantially from previous template files that were about 1 MB using the same workflow. (see General_Template_Large_File attachment)
- When trying to start a new project from the new (massive) project template file from the main ArcGIS Pro opening screen, the program gets stuck on the opening screen for at least half an hour, the project name in the assigned file explorer folder is the same as the project template file name, and there is a copy of the master geodatabase in the new file explorer folder. It does not save the project with the correct name that I assigned it when first creating the project like it used to, and it does not create a new unique geodatabase assigned to the project.
Important to note, I always uncheck the "share outside of organization", "include toolboxes", and "include history items" when creating a project template. Nothing in my process to create the project template has changed, but everything about the final project template is wrong.
Initially I thought this could be related to unknown/random corruption of our master geodatabase or the projects I use to edit the project templates. I created a new master geodatabase from scratch with the desired feature classes and created a new project that contains all of the data, symbology styles, and map templates that we use. This took a long time, which is why we need the project templates to begin with. Ultimately, this did not resolve the long processing time, large file size, and weird behavior with the project file naming and geodatabase copying. This seems to rule out the possibility of a data issue on my end.
After digging, I saw this community post here from 2022 that discusses how entire geodatabases linked to the project were being packaged in the project template instead of the reference to the geodatabase getting packaged. They note similar file sizes and geodatabase copying that I noted above. This seemed to be resolved, as I was able to use the same process to get template files of 1 MB that worked as intended. Did something recently change with ArcGIS Pro so that entire geodatabases linked to the project are being packaged in the project template instead of a reference to the geodatabase source? This seems to be the problem, as far as I can gather from my troubleshooting efforts.
This renders the project template useless for now and we are trying to figure out a resolution. Our current solution is to open the base project used to create the project template, save it as a new project, and then create a new geodatabase for feature class creation. Not a bad workaround, but significantly worse than the previously perfect workflow I had set up with the project templates. Any guidance on this issue would be much appreciated.
Chris P
