Too many layers that wont merge

Question

Hello, I have a problem with too many layers and I'm not sure what to do, I have data from many places e.g. "geographic data 2012" "geographic data 2013" "land data 2012" "land data 2013" etc and they each have slightly different information, I have put them all on arc and tryed to meagre them but I get an error and some points will not meagre, so I have had to just group them, this come into a problem when I  try and perform various analysis on them however as I have over 400 layers and it becomes unfeasible. Please let me know if I am coming about this all wrong and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Willoh · Answer

Thanks George, thats amazingly helpful

George_Thompson · Answer

Here are some more details and the help docs of the workflow:

Create Feature Class: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/feature-classes/create-a-feature-class.htm#ESRI_SECTION1_24AA44E4C5F4490EB0EAFE3ED7547149

You may want to import the schema on Step 2 and add fields as needed

Then append the data layer to the one you created above: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/data-management/append.htm

Think all "geographic data ####" layers would be loaded

Once all the data is in the same layer, you could have a field (that you created earlier) calculated to what the source was: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/data-management/calculate-field.htm

This would put all the data into a single feature class.

Hope this helps you down the correct path....

Willoh · Answer

Hi George thank you so much for your reply, I'm not very competent with Arc yet can you explain what you mean in a little more detail at all?