Publish from files on a cloud drive

Sign in to your account on Google Drive, Dropbox, or Microsoft OneDrive to access and publish one of the following types of files as a hosted feature layer:

• Comma-separated values (CSV)
• Microsoft Excel
• GeoJSON
• Shapefile (must be compressed in a .zip file)
• File geodatabase (must be compressed in a .zip file)

You can also publish a Google Sheets file from your Google Drive account.

If you publish a file that you add from a cloud storage location, only a hosted feature layer is created; the file is not copied to your organization. This saves space and credits.

1. Verify that you are signed in to the organization and have privileges to publish hosted feature layers.
2. On the My content tab of the content page, click New item.
3. Click the cloud provider where the file is stored.
4. Sign in to your account for this cloud provider.
5. Search for or browse to the file.

   All searches use the search capability made available by the specific cloud provider.

6. Click the file to be published.
7. Choose to add the file and publish it as a hosted layer.
8. Click Next.
9. Review the included fields.

   You can remove fields, change the display name of a field, and change the field type. If the field types can be identified, they are set automatically.

   This option is only available for CSV and Excel files.

10. For Time zone, choose a time zone for the date fields in the file.

    This option is only available if the file contains date fields.

    By default, date fields are assumed to contain UTC date and time. If the date fields store values that use a different time zone, choose that time zone.

    Note:

    The time zone you choose is applied to all date fields in the file. If you later overwrite the hosted feature layer using updated data, the time zone specified when you initially published is used.

11. Click Next.
12. Choose the information in the file that ArcGIS Online should use to locate features.
    • If the file contains coordinates, choose Latitude and longitude, MGRS coordinates, or USNG coordinates.
    • If the file contains addresses or place-names—for example, Westminster Abbey or Panama Canal—choose Addresses or place names. By default, ArcGIS Online locates addresses based on your organization's region.
    • To create a nonspatial table layer, choose None.
13. If you are locating features based on addresses or place-names and your organization has multiple locators configured, click Advanced location settings and choose the locator to use.
14. If the file contains addresses, click Advanced location settings and use the Region drop-down list to specify the country in which the addresses are located.

    If the file contains addresses from multiple countries or from a country that is not in the list, select World.

15. Choose whether the location fields are based on one or multiple fields.
16. Review the location fields if any are present in the file.

    If ArcGIS Online can identify which fields contain location information, it sets them automatically. If necessary, you can change location fields using the drop-down menu.

17. Click Next.
18. Provide a title.
19. Choose a folder in My content where you want to save the item.

    Alternatively, you can choose Create new folder from the menu and type a folder name to save the item in a new folder.

    Folder names cannot contain 4-byte Unicode characters.

20. If your organization has set up content categories, click Assign categories and select up to 20 categories to help people find the hosted feature layer you're publishing.

    You can also start typing a category name to narrow the list of categories.

21. Optionally, type tags that describe the item.

    Separate the terms with commas (for example, Federal land is considered one tag, and Federal, land is considered two tags).

    As you type, you can select any of the suggested tags that appear; suggestions are generated from tags you previously added.

22. Optionally, provide a summary that describes the item.
23. Click Save.

The feature layer is added to My content, but the file stays on the cloud drive. If you update the source file on the cloud drive, you can overwrite the content in the hosted feature layer.

To test the new hosted feature layer once publishing completes, open it in Map Viewer.

By default, only you and the administrator can access the hosted feature layer. If you have sharing privileges, share the layer to allow others to access it. Configure the item details for the layer and change feature layer settings.

To share the hosted feature layer as a copy in a distributed collaboration, you must enable synchronization.