# way to get actor by world outliner path

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/way-to-get-actor-by-world-outliner-path/721750>\
**Category:** Programming & Scripting\
**Tags:** Editor-Utility, unreal-engine, question\
**Created:** [December 5, 2022, 10:34am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/way-to-get-actor-by-world-outliner-path/721750 "2022-12-05T10:34:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![liyangyang0901](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@liyangyang0901](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/liyangyang0901)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2022, 10:34am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/way-to-get-actor-by-world-outliner-path/721750/1 "2022-12-05T10:34:35Z")

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Is there a way to get actor by world outliner path, for example, `/a/b/Mesh01`. I want to check whether an actor exists in world outliner, then modify some property or delete it.

 ![image](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/5/b/e/5bec92759341f0fe622a06f19b59bc3ddb2c2465.png)

I found an API may be useful, `get_actor_reference`, but tha parameter `path` doesn’t look like the path in world outliner.  
[https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/PythonAPI/class/EditorActorSubsystem.html?highlight=get\_actor\_reference#unreal.EditorActorSubsystem.get\_actor\_reference](https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/PythonAPI/class/EditorActorSubsystem.html?highlight=get_actor_reference#unreal.EditorActorSubsystem.get_actor_reference)

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**Author:** ![MoYan1082](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@MoYan1082](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/MoYan1082)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2023, 12:25pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/way-to-get-actor-by-world-outliner-path/721750/2 "2023-03-27T12:25:45Z")

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How to get AActor with world outline path ? py or cpp.

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**Author:** ![sarahlenker](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/sarahlenker/32/994419_2.png) [@sarahlenker](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/sarahlenker)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 9:39pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/way-to-get-actor-by-world-outliner-path/721750/3 "2024-11-19T21:39:33Z")

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Hi @liyangyang0901!

To add onto this- these are the only nodes available related to the outliner name and path:

 ![Screenshot 2024-11-19 153159](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/4/8/e/48ec4c5279eb682bf4cbe48f6910d9842ca50c84.png)

With some workarounds, you could use this for your purposes, though it wouldn’t exactly be clean. You could check the paths of actors in the world and compare it against your desired path to see if something already exists there.

As far as doing this through python… here are the available functions, however I don’t think these will help you get any closer to your solution. [Search — Unreal Python 4.27 (Experimental) documentation](https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/python-api/search?q=folder+path&application_version=4.27)