Debugging ERROR 000725: Output Dataset: Dataset ... already exists

Question

Using ArcMap 10.2 I am trying to run a Merge function by Arcpy as

# Set environment settings
env.workspace = "E:\\GIS\\ROR"

path = "E:\\GIS\\Data\\"
featureClass = "band-tailed_pigeon.shp"
InputFeature = path + featureClass
FinaloutLocation = "E:\\GIS\\Data\\Final"

dissolve_1 = "dissolved_1.shp"
dissolve_2 = "dissolved_2.shp"
dissolve_3 = "dissolved_3.shp"
dissolve_4 = "dissolved_4.shp"
dissolve_5 = "dissolved_5.shp"
# Process: Merge
inFeaturesToMerge = [dissolve_1,dissolve_2,dissolve_3,dissolve_4,dissolve_5]
arcpy.Merge_management(inFeaturesToMerge, FinaloutLocation)

but I am getting this error:

ExecuteError: Failed to execute. Parameters are not valid.
ERROR 000725: Output Dataset: Dataset E:\GIS\Data\Final already exists.

Why is this happening?

Answer 1

The message is telling you that Dataset E:\GIS\Data\Final already exists.

However the output from Merge should be a feature class or table instead of a folder name so as a test try setting:

FinaloutLocation = "E:\\GIS\\Data\\Final\\test.shp"