Working in an enterprise system. We need to determine if everyone needs to update to 10.6 at the same time for mxd cross-compatibility or can we update from 10.5 as needed.
[GIS] Opening MXD saved in one version using earlier version
arcgis-10.5arcgis-10.6arcgis-desktopmxd
Related Solutions
What you are after may not be determinable, it requires that the document info was saved/embedded and as you've found that is not often embedded into the document. I cannot find any reference to when this data is saved/skipped. For what it's worth this is another method:
import os, sys, arcpy
from comtypes.client import GetModule, CreateObject
BasePath = sys.argv[1]
# read http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/80/how-do-i-access-arcobjects-from-python
# read it CAREFULLY and follow the links, there's more information needed on the links
m = GetModule(r'C:\Your path\Desktop10.1\com\esriCarto.olb') # change as needed
import comtypes.gen.esriCarto as esriCarto
mapObj = CreateObject(esriCarto.MapDocument ,interface=esriCarto.IMapDocument)
for xPath, xDirs, xFiles in os.walk(BasePath):
for ThisFile in xFiles:
fName, fExt = os.path.splitext(ThisFile)
if fExt.upper() == ".MXD":
mapObj.Open(os.path.join(xPath,ThisFile))
verInf = mapObj.GetVersionInfo()
if verInf[0]:
arcpy.AddMessage("Version info missing : %s" % ThisFile)
else:
arcpy.AddMessage("%s is version %d.%d" %(ThisFile,verInf[1],verInf[2]))
This uses COM types and the IMapDocument.GetVersionInfo interface in python; as I have discovered only about half of my map documents have this metadata attached to them. This however does expose another interface IMapDocument.DocumentVersion which, when it returns a value of 0 means the MapDocument can be opened and 1 or 2 if it can't.. at least you can decide if the MXD can be opened with the current version of ArcMap (value=0) or is a future version (value=1) or the MXD is likely to be broken (value=2).
I can confirm this. I have 10.5 installed and I also do not get the option to save as 10.4.
However, there is also no option for saving as 10.2. This is because MXD documents saved in 10.2 can be opened in 10.1.
My first thought was that documents saved as 10.4 can be opened in 10.3. But I was able to test this and it doesn't work.
So, it's likely that this is a bug. I suggest you log this with Esri.
Best Answer
You need to save a copy of the mxd to an earlier version if you have saved the mxd in ArcGIS latest version 10.6.
Based on ArcGIS help: Saving a map: