Accepted Solutions
Importing (“Extracting”) Project Packages
Project packages come as .ppkx files.
Not recommended: If you double-click on the .ppkx file in Windows Explorer, it will unzip it to a location in your profile and open the corresponding APRX. Files are saved to your Documents folder under ArcGIS\Packages.
A folder is created with the package name with a number appended. I’m not sure what that number is, but it might be to unzip it to different locations if you do it multiple times. Or maybe that’s to avoid duplication.
Anyhow, I don’t recommend this, because of the potential to leave large files behind that you don’t clean up. It is a good way to quickly look at the map, but the recommended approach (below) takes about the same amount of time, with no risk of leaving cruft behind.
Recommended approach:
You can use the “Extract Package” GP tool to open it. I generally open Pro and start it without a project to run this.
The advantage of this is you can specify where it goes. The “Cache Package” setting help is confusing, but I generally leave it unchecked to only go to the specified location. If you check it, it will also be copied to your Documents folder. I have no idea what the purpose of this is if you’re already telling it where to extract it.
When it runs, it doesn’t make any changes to your project where you ran it (I think), so you can close that. The output should be in the folder you specified. The results are generally in 3 folders:
- commondata: A folder containing the various data sources. If the package that was bundled uses multiple geodatabases, it will put those in separate sub-folders. Same for file-based data, like Excel or raster files.
- p30: Folder with a project for ArcGIS Pro v3.x
- p20: Same as p30 for Pro v2.x
- NOTE: They say this will update to p40 when Pro v4 is released.
Importing (“Extracting”) Project Packages
Project packages come as .ppkx files.
Not recommended: If you double-click on the .ppkx file in Windows Explorer, it will unzip it to a location in your profile and open the corresponding APRX. Files are saved to your Documents folder under ArcGIS\Packages.
A folder is created with the package name with a number appended. I’m not sure what that number is, but it might be to unzip it to different locations if you do it multiple times. Or maybe that’s to avoid duplication.
Anyhow, I don’t recommend this, because of the potential to leave large files behind that you don’t clean up. It is a good way to quickly look at the map, but the recommended approach (below) takes about the same amount of time, with no risk of leaving cruft behind.
Recommended approach:
You can use the “Extract Package” GP tool to open it. I generally open Pro and start it without a project to run this.
The advantage of this is you can specify where it goes. The “Cache Package” setting help is confusing, but I generally leave it unchecked to only go to the specified location. If you check it, it will also be copied to your Documents folder. I have no idea what the purpose of this is if you’re already telling it where to extract it.
When it runs, it doesn’t make any changes to your project where you ran it (I think), so you can close that. The output should be in the folder you specified. The results are generally in 3 folders:
- commondata: A folder containing the various data sources. If the package that was bundled uses multiple geodatabases, it will put those in separate sub-folders. Same for file-based data, like Excel or raster files.
- p30: Folder with a project for ArcGIS Pro v3.x
- p20: Same as p30 for Pro v2.x
- NOTE: They say this will update to p40 when Pro v4 is released.
