Recover edits from ArcGIS Collector (Windows)

Summary

ArcGIS Collector is often used in Offline Mode to make edits and create features to a feature layer.

Sometimes a Sync Error is received when trying to synchronize edits made to a feature layer in ArcGIS Collector (Windows).

If the Sync can't be made, or anything goes wrong, it is still possible to access the content directly from the device and upload it to ArcGIS Online manually.

There can be multiple causes for this:

• Users have signed in to the same account on multiple devices
• There is a bad network connection
• There was a corruption in the upload

Procedure

The following workflow can be used to recover the content including the changes made to the data.

1. On the Windows device, open Windows File Explorer.
2. Browse to the following folder:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Esri.CollectorforArcGIS_eytg3kh68c6a8\LocalState

3. Open the <username>_<orgId> folder related to the organization you are working with.  If unsure, open the accounts.json folder in the LocalState directory and reference the folders section to determine which relate to the organization in question.
4. To find the correct folder for the map, either open and cross-reference the thumbnail, or open the info.json file and browse to the title parameter, which is the name of the web map.
   
   The following images show the folder location, the info.json file, and the map view in ArcGIS Collector, respectively.

5. Copy the <name.geodatabase> file from this directory and convert it with the appropriate the geoprocessing tool:

• For ArcMap: Copy Runtime Geodatabase To File Geodatabase
• For ArcGIS Pro: Mobile Geodatabase To File Geodatabase (Conversion)

6. Check that this has converted properly by loading the feature class from the output file geodatabase into ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro.

7. Once the database has been converted, locate the output database in Windows File Explorer and add it to a compressed (.zip) folder.

 

8. In ArcGIS Online, navigate to the feature layer for which the changes are intended and click Update Data > Append Data to Layer.

9. Browse to the .zip file of the geodatabase and select File Geodatabase for the contents drop down.

10. Select Upload and Continue and Apply Updates. You should now be able to view the updates in the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer.