Controlling tool results

To access the geoprocessing settings, click the Tools menu on the Standard toolbar of the application you are working in and click Options, then click the Geoprocessing tab.

The first choice you should see is the "Overwrite the outputs of geoprocessing operations" check box. By checking this option, all tools will automatically overwrite any existing output when run (you will receive a warning before tool execution that the output exists). With this option off, existing outputs will not be overwritten, and the tool will display an error, preventing you from executing the tool.

Each time you execute a tool, a result is added in the Results tab of the ArcToolbox window.

Learn more about working with Results

You want to manage the number of entries in the Result tab for two reasons:

• Too many result entries makes it hard to find the few results you may be interested in.
• Each time you open ArcCatalog or a map document, the contents of the Result tab must be loaded. The more entries you have, the longer it will take to open the application.

To help you manage the number of results, you can choose a duration for keeping results, as shown below.

When you close ArcCatalog or a map document, entries older then the duration you choose will be removed from the Results tab.

NOTE: No data will be deleted—just the entries in the Results tab are removed.

In the Display / Temporary Data frame, you'll find two check boxes that control the display and permanence of results. The first check box, "Add results of geoprocessing operations to the display", is only available if you are working in an ArcGIS Desktop application with a display, such as ArcMap. It is unavailable in ArcCatalog. By default, this option is checked so that tool results will automatically be added to the display.

The "Results are temporary by default" check box is only available when the "Add results of geoprocessing operations to the display"check box is checked. By default, this option is unchecked so that all results are permanent. Check this on if you want all tool results to be temporary.

When results are temporary, the behavior is as follows:

• Tool outputs are added to the display (since "Add results of geoprocessing operations to the display"must be checked to have temporary results).
• If you exit ArcMap without saving the map document, the output data is deleted from disk.
• If you save the map document, any tool results in the ArcMap table of contents will be saved to disk, regardless of what the temporary results setting is. This is because geoprocessing has to assume that by saving a map document, you want everything in the ArcMap table of contents saved—you don't want to open the map document and have missing data.
• If you don't want to save the map document, but you do want to save the data in an individual layer, right-click the layer and click Make Permanent.

New Layer Visibility

You can control whether newly added layers are visible or not with the New Layer Visibility option found in Tools > Options > General tab, as illustrated below. (This is not a geoprocessing option, but a general ArcMap option.)