ArcGIS Scripting Error When Trying To Run Tools: A Solution

[GIS in Ecology]

While teaching a course today, an issue became apparent where if you open the ITEM DESCRIPTIONS for a tool in the TOOLBOX window, and then close it again (even if you haven't edited the contents), you then get a scripting error the next time you try to open a tool to try to use it (it will say something along the lines of 'An Error Has Occurred In The Script On This Page' and it will ask you 'Do You Want To Continue Running Scripts On Thie Page?', with a Yes/No Button option below it) . This was happening with versions of ArcGIS ranging from 10.1 to 10.3, and threatened to derail much of my planned teaching for the afternoon.

 

Luckily, a quick search on the internet revealed a simple solution, so if you run into this problem, here's what to do to get your GIS project back up and running as quickly as possible: Change the internet security setting on the computers from Medium-High to Medium. This solved the issue in all cases, and the tools all ran normally again after doing this. 

 

If you run into this problem, and want to solve it, you can find full details of how to impliment this solution here: https://gisnuts.com/terra/blog/2013/01/22/arcgis-geoprocessing-tools-scripting-error. This exceedingly useful article will also provide you with as much information as you could possibly want on why the problem is occurring in the first place.

 

I'm posting this here, as I know others may find it useful if they run into the same issue.

 

All the best,

 

Colin