ArcMap 10.8 Select By Location not loading layers

[AlecColarusso]

Hello,

My lab offers workshops and we recently updated to 10.8 an error that never really happened to me is the select by location interface loading with no layers despite layers being within the document. A few of the students and I have been having issues with it. the solution requires a reboot of ArcMap before the layers will load again. I didn't know if this issue was a bug with 10.8 - as I used 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and 10.6 over the past 5 years and never noticed this issue before. My supervisor said it may be an issue with how memory is being used in the program. I figured I should post it somewhere and I will add an image as soon as it happens to me again.

Thank you,

Alec

[SamirPatel]

Yep... now I see that you had caught this earlier!

I describe the same issue here and indeed I think it is a bug:

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcmap-questions/select-by-location-not-showing-possible-target-layers...

[DorStiles]

This is definitely a new bug and started happening after i upgraded as well .... I hope they include a fix in the next patch. The tool window does not want to refresh when a new Data Frame is activated and just to add to the info about this bug the 'Select By Location' tool will get stuck on whichever data frame you use the tool in first, so it isn't even necessarily stuck to the first data frame in a given MXD, just whichever one uses the tool first.

The work around I use is of having a 'Staging' Data Frame and swapping out my data into and out of it to use the tool....

[CaseyRoss]

I teach an ArcGIS in Social Sciences class to University Students and am running into the same bug in ArcMap 10.8.1

[AntonyWitts]

I am having the same problem too.  I'm also finding that selections (when i can make them) don't always seem to be taken forward into a report I have which relies on selected features.

[EstherJensen]

I have the same problem. Is there a solution to this?

[AlecColarusso]

What I usually have the students do is save ArcMap, completely close all ArcGIS desktop applications on the machine, and then reopen ArcMap; it will resolve itself. It does seem to happen on the same two computers, but I can't seem to figure out why.

[EstherJensen]

Thanks it worked for me

[SouleymaneFall]

If this happens again, you can just search for the Select Layer By Location tool and use it. It will load all layers.

[AlecColarusso]

Thank you for your reply, while this is definitely a good (and much faster) work-around. It's not necessarily a solution to the problem with the select by location dialog box.