Calculate Geometry

Question

Dear all,

In the attribute table of a dbf file I added a field "Area" and wanted to calculate the area value of the features with function "Calculate Geometry". But this function is grey and does not work. What could be the reason for that and what do I have to change?

Thanks in advance and kind regards,
Matthias

DanielHall_Ballester · Answer

Matthias,
if I have read your post correctly, you are trying to calculate the area from a .dbf file.
This is a table and so has no geometry.  You will not be able to calculate the area when there are no geometries.
You will need to join this .dbf file to the original .shp file or feature class you created it from and then you will be able to calculate the area using the calculate geometry function.
Alternatively, if you are able to work within a file geodatabase, then your feature class will get an automatic area column which will be automatically kept up to date.

I hope this helps.

Dan

RichardFairhurst · Answer

Does the shape file have a spatial reference projection?  If that is corrupt or missing you won't be able to calculate geometry outputs.   Does it have a Geographic (angular units like long/lat degrees) or Projected (linear coordinate units like meters or kilometers) spatial reference?

Let us know whether or not the normal field calculator is disabled as well.  If it is disabled then there is a lock of some kind on the file.  Could anyone else have the file open or could you have two copies of it open in separate maps?  Also have you started an edit session or not?  If you started an edit session on a different workspace that might affect the geometry calcuator (although I don't recall that situation preventing it from working).  You are using a shapefile and not an SDE database I am assuming.

MatthiasWoerner · Answer

Dear Richard,

thanks for the hint, but it didn't help. I added a field "Test" and tried some other names, too, but still the function "Calculate Geometry" remains grey. Any other ideas what went wrong?

Regards,
Matthias