workspace suddenly becomes read-only

[MatthewFoster]

Hi Everyone,
This is driving me crazy.  I will be working on editing a point shapefile (or feature class in a file geodatabase), adding points and an attribute for the ID as I go along.  I can save the edits as I go (and I do), but after a few saves, the shapefile or feature class suddenly becomes read-only - or at least, that is what ArcGIS tells me, "Unable to save edits. Workspace or data source is read only".  I never set anything to read only, and after successfully saving my file 3 times (in the latest case) it decides to give me this error on the fourth time!  I have tried putting the geodatabase in a different directory, I've tried as a shapefile... Any ideas?  This has happened repeatedly with different projects lately.  Very frustrating

Thanks in advance,

Matt

[AdamCinderich1]

same problem like you guys...5 hours of work will be blown away... thank you ESRI!!!

Thankfully I didn't lose 5 hours of work but I probably did lose about an hour's worth - so frustrating.  Still no idea why this is continuing to happen (has happened to me 3 times now) or how to make it stop.

[NeilCurri]

This is happening to one of my students. She's using the trial download of 10.1 from ESRI on a laptop with Windows 7. Performance seems otherwise OK.

[AdamCinderich1]

I too am using a student license of 10.1 on a Windows 7 machine.

This is happening to one of my students. She's using the trial download of 10.1 from ESRI on a laptop with Windows 7. Performance seems otherwise OK.

[Bahaa_Al_DinKhleifat]

yes ... using ArcGIS 10.1 Desktop xp OS have the same problem

[MattO_Neal]

ArcMap 10.1 on Windows 7 here, having the same problem.  What seems weird is it is intermittent, and I have been working on the same dataset on the same computer for a couple of weeks, with the same software (including antivirus -- MSSE) installed and running, etc... and only in the past 2 days have I had this error (and only sometimes).

[JensHaffner]

Same thing here while working with file geodatabases in ArcGIS 10.1...
We've been doing the same things for a year in 10.0 and we never saw this issue there.

[RyanDammrose]

I am also running into this problem.  I am running ArcGIS 10.1 SP1 (Build 3143) on Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) and my file geodatabase periodically (and seemingly arbitrarily) becomes read only.  I can get it to go back for a while sometimes by closing out completely and making sure to force close ArcGIS Cache Manager in processes and then restarting.  It seems to have something to do with edit mode and swapping back and forth between.  I haven't put my finger on it yet, but it is extremely inconvenient and annoying.

[Bahaa_Al_DinKhleifat]

yes you are right Mr. mattdoneal cause if you exclude ArcGIS processes it will be solved

[Joeysmith]

I would go into your services and processes tabs in task manager and see what is running.

[EmilyMosen]

I've had this problem many times before as well (both in 10.0 and 10.1). If you are editing a feature class or shapefile, exporting to a new file seems to be the way to work around not being able to save your changes. However, this doesn't seem to be an option for annotation feature classes, unfortunately.

I tried an experiment today after being unable to save my edits through the editor toolbar. I proceeded to close the ArcMap file in which I was working, knowing that I would be prompted, "do you want to save your edits?" and I was able to click yes and successfully save edits. (However, I believe I had tried that on another occasion with no success.)

I don't have an answer for why this happens but I theorize that it has something to do with our in-office server syncing with our backup cloud server. I also sometimes see my geodatabases spontaneously duplicating, and I won't know I've been working in a new geodatabase until later, and I'm pretty certain this problem is related to the syncing. I mention this because it might be useful to try working from one's hard drive when these problems arise.

Good luck everyone.