Searching by tag in Desktop GIS

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04-20-2021 01:34 PM
AlfredBaldenweck
MVP Regular Contributor

Sorry if this is the wrong place (It's either here or on the ArGIS Pro board).

Is there a reliable way to search by tag on ArcGIS for Desktop? I do not mean searching your AGOL or Enterprise portals, I mean searching data that you have on your local machine.

I have found multiple articles  detailing how to search with tags, going back at least as far as ArcMap 9 at one point. 

You are able to tag local shapefiles or feature classes in ArcCatalog and in the Catalog View, but I haven't been able to successfully search for the tags in either Catalog. Is there something I'm missing?

I've check my syntax, I've specified which path I want to search, and at this point I have run out of ideas for what could be the issue, if it is actually possible.

Thank you

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7 Replies
DrVSSKiran
Occasional Contributor II

Hi,

Here is the way to search a layer using tags in ArcGIS Pro desktop version.

Go to the ArcGIS Pro -> View -> Catalog View -> Search the GDB or Project which you wish to search the list of layers using tags and type tags:tagname (for example - tags:bmc) in search layer and hit enter.

Here is the output list from tags:bmc (total 4 layers selected)

DrVSSKiran_0-1619177872491.png

Regards,

Kiran

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AlfredBaldenweck
MVP Regular Contributor

Yes, this is exactly what is not working for me.

Searching for this specific file by tag:

AlfredBaldenweck_0-1619196490808.png

 

I search, (and directly in its database, too) and nothing pops up. 

AlfredBaldenweck_1-1619196577985.png

 

I am using Pro 2.7, and I can't figure out why this won't work. 

 

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DrVSSKiran
Occasional Contributor II

Type tags not tag. Make sure you're in the same folder or same project database from where you want to search. example...

tags:test

 

 

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AlfredBaldenweck
MVP Regular Contributor

Yes, as you can see in the second photo, that is exactly what I did.

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FranziskaSumpf
New Contributor II

I know your question is from last year, but I wondered if you solved your problem. I just spent a lot of time creating metadata and was really frustrated that I couldn't use it to search items.

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AlfredBaldenweck
MVP Regular Contributor

Nope, I never figured it out.

It works better for items in AGOL, but still not great. (The search bar needs a big overhaul)

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FranziskaSumpf
New Contributor II

I did some more research and found out, that data on network drives isn't indexed by default. I think that's the problem with my data.

I changed the settings for indexing to include network drives. Now the ArcGISIndexingServer has a lot of work to do. I already tried that yesterday, but indexing was incomplete (I was working from home through a VPN). In my organization we don't use AGOL or Enterprise, most of the data is stored on network drives.

There seems to be no way to only index certain folders.