Why are my additional Add-In folders disappearing?

Question

I thought it just something I was doing. Then someone emailed me about about the same issue. Then I checked a user that I set up on ArcGIS 10 and his had been wiped.

It doesn't happen right away--days go by before the AddInFolder XML tags in the AddInFolders.xml are removed for no apparent reason.

Is this a regular occurrence? A documented bug? User error?

I've checked set Read-only attribute on the file, so hopefully that makes it stick. But users can't add Add-In folders (not necessarily a bad thing for me).

Answer 1

So this is the culprit. It's a far more likely reason than the answer I posted yesterday (also reproducible, but not easily).

"NIM060555: ArcMap Add-ins stored on a network drive does not persist if ArcCatalog is opened between ArcMap sessions".

I was able to reproduce several times.

The work around of setting the read-only attribute on the AddInFoldersList.xml works, but user can't add/remove folders while in ArcMap.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open ArcMap.
2. Go to Customize > Add-In Manager > Options Tab.
3. Click ‘Add Folder’ > then add folder from a mapped network drive that contains an add-in.
4. Select “Load all Add-Ins without restrictions” and click close.
5. Now go to Customize > Customize Mode > Commands Tab.
6. Select the newly added Add-in Control and Drag + dock the add-in tool to an ArcMap toolbar.
7. Close ArcMap, then re-open ArcMap and go to Customize > Add-In Manager.
8. Note that the add-in is still available here and in the toolbar.
9. Close ArcMap again and open ArcCatalog. Without doing anything, close ArcCatalog and once again open ArcMap.
10. Go to Customize > Add-In Manager. You will now notice that the Add-In is no longer available.

Answer 2

Here is a workaround that fixes the problem:

Add a new key and string values at the following location in the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > ESRI > Desktop10.0 > Settings > AddInFolders

This is in the ESRI help see the bottom of this page: http://help.arcgis.com/en/sdk/10.0/arcobjects_net/conceptualhelp/index.html#//0001000004n7000000

Answer 3

I found one reason and it relates to when ArcMap crashes.

ArcMap writes to the AddInFoldersList.xml on shutdown. If ArcMap crashes on exit while writing to the AddInFoldersList.xml and results in an incomplete XML file, no AddIns will be present the next time ArcMap is started.

Then if ArcMap is shutdown again(successfully), then the default xml file is written:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ESRI.ArcGIS.AddInFolders ver="1"><ARCMAP/></ESRI.ArcGIS.AddInFolders>

While testing, I also noticed that having 2 ArcMap instances can potentially affect the file because it will be the last ArcMap instance's AddIn configuration that will live on.

So if you add a bunch of Addin folders to ArcMap #1, shut down ArcMap. The go to ArcMap #2, do nothing and shutdown, you'll end up with whatever AddInFolderList.xml ArcMap #2 sucked in when it started.

Answer 4

Is C:\TEMP accidentally getting deleted in the interim? Try something like an Addins folder in your My Documents folder and see if that disappears too.