Catalog pane, catalog views, and browse dialog boxes

The Catalog pane, catalog views, and browse dialog boxes provide complementary ways to work with items in an ArcGIS Pro project. These items can be stored in the project file (.aprx), in system folders on your computer, on network drives, in ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise portals, on stand-alone servers, or on cloud storage devices.

The Catalog pane is a tree view of the items you have added to your project, organized by item type. Catalog views provide access to the same items but offer information and options not available in the Catalog pane. Browse dialog boxes appear when you need to browse to a location to complete a task, such as adding data to a map or opening a project.

Whether to access items from the Catalog pane or a catalog view is often a matter of personal preference. You can also use the pane and views together. For example, you can manage style items in a catalog view, inspect feature class metadata in a second catalog view, and add a web layer to a map from the Catalog pane.

Image 1 shows a browse dialog box for adding data to a map. Image 2 shows a catalog view with a preview of feature class geography. Image 3 shows the Catalog pane listing the contents of a project.

The following table compares actions supported by the Catalog pane, catalog views, and browse dialog boxes. Supported actions have a green marker, partially supported actions have a yellow marker, and unsupported actions have no marker. An action is partially supported if some of the functionality described is available or if the functionality is available under specific conditions.

Supported actions

The following table summarizes common tasks when you work with the catalog.

Action	Catalog pane	Catalog view	Browse dialog box
Browse, search for, and access GIS content on your computer, network drives, and portals.
Sort search results for project items stored on your computer or network drives.
Sort and filter search results for items hosted in a portal.
Browse and search for portal groups.
Connect to items such as folders, databases, and servers to add them to a project.
Designate frequently used items as project favorites and add favorites to a project.
Create items, add items to a project, and import items. You can create, add, and import items from the Insert tab on the ribbon. You can perform these actions in the Catalog pane or a catalog view by right-clicking the appropriate item container (if present) or an empty area of the pane or view. On browse dialog boxes, you can create folders, file geodatabases, and mobile geodatabases.
Access metadata for viewing and editing.
Manage items with operations such as rename, alias, copy, move, and delete.
Preview data and create thumbnail images of data.
View file size and modification date for file geodatabase items.
Display project items in columns or as tiles.
Import, view, and manage styles.
Browse the catalog with the location bar.
Open the File Explorer location of an item.