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I've produced a map in QGIS, with various shapefile layers. I want to share this with a colleague.

If I send him everything, keeping the same file structure, will it open ok on his machine?

PolyGeo
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Justin Hemming
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    plugin Qpackage (more for archive) or Offline Editing allows to move QGIS projects to other computers with the same Operating System – Mapperz Dec 10 '15 at 17:43

1 Answers1

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As with many answers--it depends.

If you are sending the shapefiles themselves, then it should be fine (making sure that you send all pieces of the shapefile--.prj, .dbf, etc).

If you're sharing a map document that points to shapefiles, then the recipient would need permissions for those files. If they're on a share drive or in a database, then they would need to have read privileges to that drive. If the map points to data located on your C: drive, then they will be unable to see them.

I find that sharing shapefiles with those outside of my organization or in another department or group is easier than trying to send a map and hoping that everyone has the same permissions for the fileshare or database.

MaryBeth
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    Thanks, my plan was to send the .qgs file along with a folder containing all shape files. Does the qgs file reference my hard drive, or just a folder relative to the project file. ie. the shapefiles are in a subfolder to the folder containing the qgs file. – Justin Hemming Dec 10 '15 at 18:06
  • Then the only issue would be that they would need to save the folder of shapefiles exactly where they did to be able to open the map document and be able to run with it. However, since they have the original shapefiles, re-linking shouldn't be an issue. I'm unsure how QGIS works, but with ArcGIS, when you repair a data source, many times, the whole map document will repair once that root folder is remapped, so not everything has to be changed manually. – MaryBeth Dec 10 '15 at 18:11
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    QGIS uses relative paths by default – Nathan W Dec 11 '15 at 06:23