Why don't all folders within a symlinked folder show up in 'Catalog or 'Map?

530
0
03-26-2018 03:51 PM
PatIampietro
Occasional Contributor

Symbolic links, or symlinks are a useful method to reference folders with long, complicated, or problematic paths, such as those with spaces in them. They're like shorcuts or aliases (alii??) for folders. They can also be useful as a workaround for the fact that Pro will not let one connect to the root o...

The Complete Guide to Creating Symbolic Links (aka Symlinks) on Windows

One case where symlinks can be useful is for working with data stored on Google Drive, which unfortunately has "My Drive" (with a space) hardwired into the path. Creating a symlink can make that pesky space invisible to ArcGIS.

However, I'm having an issue where only a small subset (30) of my folders within the symlinked My Drive are showing up from within ArcMap or 'Catalog.  The folders are all definitely there when viewed in Drive and FileStream but only 30 are visible in Arc. I can see no pattern as to sharing status, date created, content type, folder names, or any other attribute with respect to whether the folders show or not in ArcGIS. But the display/not display status is consistent; the same folders always show up.

If I go to Drive and rename one of the folders that does show up in Arc, it will no longer do so after a refresh (and it is not replaced by another that previously did not display). But if I name it back to the same name, it appears again.

If I rename on the ArcCatalog side, I can see the effect in Drive, but after a refresh or two the folder will disappear from Catalog, unless it is reverted to the original name in Drive and refreshed again in Catalog. 

Is there some kind of limited, and cached list of folders at play here? Anyone else run into this? And any suggestions on how to get all my Drive folders to show up?

Thanks everyone!

0 Kudos
0 Replies