To piggyback on Meghan’s comment, make sure you have all the associated files you need for a working shapefile. At a minimum you need the following for each shapefile:

.SHP – contains the geometry or spatial information

.DBF – contains the attribute data

.SHX – Index used to link the SHP and DBF files

There may be additional files as well depending on how you have used the shapefile in the past, if you assigned it a projection and/or created metadata for them.

.PRJ – stores the assigned coordinate system data for a Shapefile

.XML – Metadata for a shapefile if someone actually took the time to create it

.SBN and .SBX – Spatial indexes for the shapefile. I have had these get corrupted and had to delete them. ArcGIS will generally automatically recreate these after they are deleted if they are needed.

.AIN & .AIH – Created when you join or relate a table to a shapefile. ArcGIS will automatically recreate these if needed and they are missing. These also get corrupted from time to time.

There are other files that get created when you use shapefiles but these are some of the most common. As long as you have the three required files and they have not been corrupted, you should be able to use the shapefile. Esri has a utility at one time that would repair some damaged shapefiles. I have not used it in a long time and don’t remember what it was called.  

Did you happen to lose any of the component files that comprise the shapefiles?

Hello:

We haven’t gotten help from our IT folks, so I’m looking for insights from the list.

About a month ago our old server crashed.  A new server was installed and all of the backup data was uploaded to the new server.  We have read/write access to files and folders – everything seems normal.  However, in ArcGIS we cannot load GIS shapefiles that are sitting on the new server.  We’re getting the following message “Open Failed – Error opening feature class.”

We can load raster, geodatabase, and CAD files.

Does anyone have thoughts or solutions to this? 

Thanks,

Jeff

______________________________________

Jeff Bolton, Supervising Environmental Analyst

Connecticut Division of Construction Services

165 Capitol Avenue, Room 482, Hartford, CT 06106

[log in to unmask] || www.ct.gov/dcs

860-713-5706 (office) || 860-655-0477 (cell)

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