Possible to repair ArcGIS 10.1 Toolbox?

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04-25-2016 12:24 PM
KarlZimmer
New Contributor II

Hello,

I was working on a ArcGIS 10.1 custom toolbox with several modelbuilder models. It was going well, but I think my harddrive containing the model accidentally was removed and corrupted the toolbox as it no longer shows the models within it when opened in ArcGIS toolbox. Is there a way to repair corrupted toolboxes? Or is it possible to open the .tbx in a text editor or something to at least view the steps of the models so I can at least remember the steps of each model so I can recreate the models in a new toolbox?  The .tbx still shows it is 1,818 KB in size so seems like the models are still saved in there, but just can't figure out a way to access them.  Thanks in advance.

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7 Replies
DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

have you examined the toolbox in arccatalog?

i don't suppose you have an old project with it embedded somewhere

KarlZimmer
New Contributor II

Yes, in ArcCatalog it shows the toolbox and the expand sign, but when I expand the toolbox no models show up.  Likewise the old mxd's show the toolbox but it is empty as well. When I re-save the toolbox it seems to revert to only 4kb so the models must not be saved when I resave it.

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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

You might want to move so ancient project to a new location/computer just in case it is loading the toolbox from the same location, where it will obviously not work) or perhaps try renaming it, start a new project and load it and examine it. OR maybe you used it on another machine? if in a multi machine environment

For future reference for others, always save an image of your model from modelbuilder (it is one of the options)

and always export your model to a script and check/save the results from the Results window.  This will allow for a manual rebuild if all is lost.

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KarlZimmer
New Contributor II

Thanks for your suggestions Dan. I had tried all of those suggestions prior to posting and unfortunately none worked. Good advice on the save image model to script. I usually back up my toolbox every couple days, but in this case it had been 3 days since the last backup and unfortunately I had made a lot of changes of that time period so my backup is really outdated.  I did save my results from the results window so I do have those to fall back on at least to guide me in the rebuild, I was just hoping the rebuild wasn't going to be necessary. Might save me some time though if perhaps there is a way to export the results to a python script when the model is no longer available?

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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus
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KarlZimmer
New Contributor II

Great blogs Dan. Unfortunately, ArcGIS is crashing whenever I try copy code to snippet.  I tried it on two different computers with separate installs of ArcGIS 10.1 both crashed so wonder if its a bug in the system. Which version were you using within your blogs? Thanks again for your thoughts and help with this. Very much appreciated.

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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

probably above 10.1 when I wrote them, I can't remember offhand, it would have been current version for the time posted.

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