Opening Map Packages

[Babcock_Kristen_L]

Map Packages:  I received 8 map packages from a client, I need to make sure all the data is there because they are leaving the project I'm working on. 

My questions are:

-Is there a special way to open a map package? I've just been double clicking on the mpk in ArcCatalog, but I noticed there are actual map projects within the map package, should I be opening them instead?

-The data seems to be saving in my C drive?  Don't I want the data and the maps to be in the same location?

-When I open some of the attribute tables, They are empty.  When I click on a field, a "table window" pops up saying There was a problem sorting, An expected Field was not found or could not be retrieved properly".   

Is there anything else I should do to make sure all the data was transferred in the mpk?

Thank you so much in advance!

[Robert_LeClair]

In ArcMap or ArcCatalog, you can run the Extract Package geoprocessing tool to determine the location to extract the contents of the Map Package.  Once extracted, you will see *.mxds and data.  You can open the *.mxd's in ArcMap and work with them.  Depending on how the Map Package was created, there is a Schema_Only parameter that if checked extracts the schema/structure of the attribute table but not the data.  Not sure what was set.

[Babcock_Kristen_L]

Do you need to "extract" the package?  Is the mpk like a zipped file basically?

[Robert_LeClair]

Kind of...I created an *.mpk in ArcMap and placed it in a temporary folder.  Then I used 7Zip to extract the data.  It created an overall folder of the map document name.  Inside the folder, there is an esriinfo folder, a v10 folder and a v108 folder.  When I ran the Extract Package GP tool into another folder, it created only the v10 and v108 folder but not the esriinfo folder. In the esriinfo folder is a thumbnail folder, a item.pkinfo file and a iteminfo.xml file.  So slight differences it would seem.

[Babcock_Kristen_L]

Thanks so much for testing out the 7Zip vs. Extract Package tool.  It makes sense that the non-gis extract tool would need another folder for the esri information.

One last question- I promise, do you know why there are always two folders? I extracted two different map packages, and both have two folders that seem to be holding the same info. Looks like your example did the same thing with the v10 and v108 folders.    Again- thanks so much for your help. 

[Robert_LeClair]

Not a problem - keep on asking questions!  So my thought process is the v108 folder is for the ArcMap/ArcCatalog 10.8.0 release and the v10 is for the ArcMap/ArcCatalog 10.0 to 10.7 releases.  So if you're not using ArcMap 10.8.0 then you can still use the contents of the extracted data/*.mxd.