ERROR 000210 Cannot create output 'name' Failed to execute CopyFeatures

Question

I'm learning ArcPy, when I run this code from Python on ArcMap it works. But it does not work from the separate Python shell.

import arcpy
from arcpy import env
import os
output_dir = "C:/Data"
env.workspace = os.path.join(output_dir, "Output.gdb")
env.overwriteOutput = True 
output_features = "name"
origins = "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ESRI\Desktop10.5\ArcCatalog\Connection to sde.sde\SDE.tablename" 
arcpy.management.CopyFeatures(origins, output_features)

I'm getting arcgisscripting.ExecuteError: ERROR 000210: Cannot create output 'name' Failed to execute (CopyFeatures).

• Vince: Please edit the question in response to requests for clarification or answers that don't solve your issue. You have a glaring naming bug (failure to use double-backslash or the raw formatting prefix (r"C:\foo") but it seems there are multiple issues, so you should update your code.

Answer 1

You haven't defined a workspace for your output, just a basename. If you run your script in ArcGIS, arcpy will use the default workspace defined at the application level. But this won't work outside ArcGIS. Either

• use arcpy.env.workspace (e.g. arcpy.env.workspace = r"C:\Data\gdb.gdb) in the beginning of your script to set the workspace,
• or set the full path to your output (e.g. output_features = r"C:\Data\gdb.gdb\name")

Note that the workspace (folder or gdb) must exist, it won't be created by Copy Features.

• bug: I added workspace to the code, still having the problem.
• GISGe: Are you sure the workspace exists?

Answer 2

You need to deal with the backslash which has special meaning to Python. I recommend using an r to treat it as a raw string.

origins = "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ESRI\Desktop10.5\ArcCatalog\Connection to sde.sde\SDE.tablename" 

should be:

origins = r"C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\ESRI\Desktop10.5\ArcCatalog\Connection to sde.sde\SDE.tablename"