Recover custom Business Analyst data after an uninstall/re-install

Summary

This article describes the steps to recover custom Business Analyst data, for example, BDS layers, custom business listings, projects, etc., after an uninstall/re-install of Business Analyst.

Business Analyst creates and keeps a My Output Data folder (C:\\My Output Data) where all of the Business Analyst data is stored. Things that are stored in this folder include custom BDS layers (Business Dataset layers), Trade Areas, report templates, Fusion Report tools, projects, etc. Upon uninstalling or re-installing Business Analyst, this folder is deleted. Fortunately, Business Analyst keeps a backup folder with this information (C:\\My Output Data Backup), which is not deleted upon uninstall/re-install.

Note:
This article applies to retired ArcGIS versions of Business Analyst Desktop 10.0 through 10.2.x. Later versions of ArcGIS may contain different functionality, as well as different names and locations for menus, commands and geoprocessing tools.

Procedure

After performing an uninstalling and re-installing the software custom data can be recovered by the following steps:

1. Navigate to C:\\My Output Data, and ensure that this folder has been created.
2. Navigate to the C:\\My Output Data Backup folder, and check in this folder to see if the data that had been previously saved is still there.

Note:
It is always recommended that a backup of this backup folder is saved on a network share in the case of a complete computer crash.

3. Copy and paste all of the data from the My Output Data Backup folder into the My Output Data folder. Should any conflicts arise, make sure to overwrite any files that already exist in the My Output Data folder. Doing this should restore Business Analyst to the pre-uninstall state that it was in.