fitnr / mxd2qgs

Python script for converting ArcGIS .mxd files to QGIS. Not under development

mxd2qgs

Convert ArcGIS .mxd files for QGIS

Based on Mxd2Qgs for ArcGIS 10 by Allan Maungu (copyright 2011)

This utility can be installed as a toolbox in ArcGIS, or run on the command line to convert several files at once.

Note that because of the limits of scripting in ArcGIS, layer symbologies are lost in the conversion

Installing in ArcGIS

Not yet ready for download, under active development. TK

Use as a Toolbox Script

1. Once layers are loaded on an ArcMap document, double click "ArcMap to Quantum GIS"
2. Specify name (with .qgs extension) and location of desired QGIS file and click OK.
3. Open the resulting QGIS file.

Use on the command line

• Run python mxd2qgs.py -O path/to/file.mxd # Saves to path/to/file.qgs
• Run python mxd2qgs.py path/to/file.mxd > /path/to/newfile.qgs # outputs to /path/to/newfile.qgs
• Run python mxd2qgs.py path/to/file.mxd --qgs /new/path/newfile.qgs # Saves to /new/path/newfile.qgs

mxd2qgs's Issues

possible ArcMap 10.6 issue?

Thanks for this important and promising tool!
We just try to check this out with ArcMap 10.6 and ran into some issues:

1. After selecting the outfile name and starting the tool, we got a traceback

Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "C:\tmp\mxd2qgs-master\mxd2qgs_arc_script.py", line 27, in <module>
        converter.convert(outfile)
    TypeError: convert() takes exactly 1 argument (2 given)

Which is clear, because convert gets as arguments self and outfile, but is only defined by def convert(self):... expecting self as the only argument.

2. Tried changing converter.convert(outfile) to converter.convert() in the above referenced line 27 solved 1) for the moment but then got another traceback of which we think it might be related to the ArcGIS version (10.6):

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "C:\tmp\mxd2qgs-master\mxd2qgs_arc_script.py", line 27, in <module>
        converter.convert()
      File "C:\tmp\mxd2qgs-master\mxd2qgs.py", line 72, in convert
        layers = self.layers()
      File "C:\tmp\mxd2qgs-master\mxd2qgs.py", line 313, in layers
        singlesymbol.appendChild(symbol)
      File "C:\Python27\ArcGIS10.6\Lib\xml\dom\minidom.py", line 113, in appendChild
        if node.nodeType == self.DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE:
    AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'nodeType'

We tried this with a very simple symbology, only one single layer with Features/Single symbol rsp. Categories/Unique values symbology.

Any ideas about this are greatly appreciated!

Can not support Chinese characters