How to add FGDC hints

In addition to the values that are added automatically by ArcCatalog, some documentation must be provided for your metadata to be compliant with the Federal Geographic Data Committee's (FGDC) Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata. When metadata is created, the FGDC Synchronizer provided with ArcCatalog adds hints indicating which mandatory elements are missing and what information they should contain. This tip demonstrates how to add those hints to an existing metadata record.

This macro doesn't verify that the selected object supports metadata, whether it already has metadata, or whether the metadata is writable.

How to use

Paste this macro into VBA.
Select an object in ArcCatalog that has metadata.
Run the macro.

[VBA]


        Sub AddFGDCHints()
    
    Dim pGxApp As IGxApplication
    Dim pGxView As IGxView
    Dim pMD As IMetadata
    Dim pPS As IPropertySet
    
    Set pGxApp = Application
    Set pMD = pGxApp.SelectedObject
    Set pPS = pMD.Metadata
    
    ' documentation hints are added to the metadata when the
    ' value of the SyncOnce element is True
    pPS.SetProperty "Esri/SyncOnce", "TRUE"
    
    ' save the changes to the metadata
    pMD.Metadata = pPS
    
    ' have ArcCatalog update the metadata - afterwards the
    ' value of the SyncOnce element is False, and the
    ' ModDate and ModTime elements will be updated
    pMD.Synchronize esriMSAAccessed, 0
    
    Set pGxView = pGxApp.View
    If TypeOf pGxView Is IGxDocumentationView Then
        pGxView.Refresh
    End If
    
End Sub