Layer name in new field after merge

[GeorgHohberg1]

I have 50 polygons named P1 to P50 which I want to merge. In another table I have area names associated to P1 - P50. When merging the polygons I cannot find any way to keep the layer names of the origional polygons in order to assign the area names to them. Is there a way to write the layer names of the original polygons in the resulting attribute table?

Thanks for your help in advance!

[JeffBarrette]

I'm not clear on the following:

I have 50 polygons named P1 to P50 which I want to merge.

I cannot find any way to keep the layer names of the origional polygons

Does this mean that you have 50 polygon feature classes (aka layers) or is this a single feature class with 50 polygons?

Jeff

[GeorgHohberg1 · Accepted solution]

Hey jbarrette,

thanks for your reply. I was talking about 50 layers with one polygon in each.
I solved the problem myself, though. I used "parse path" in the model builder for "reading" the name of each layer and then added it as an attribute to the single polygon layers before merging them.

[JasonLi1]

Not sure if you'll remember this after 6 years, can you explain what you've done to achieve this? I'm currently trying to do this very thing

[GeorgHohberg1]

Jason,

I dont't remember what I did, but I could send you the toolbox I used back then and you can figure it out yourself. In order to be able to send you a message you have to follow me, I think. Responding directly to your email did not work.

Georg

[JasonLi1]

that'd be helpful, i just followed you back

[JohnBranum]

Hi guys -

I'm also trying to do the exact same thing.  Can I get in on this?

Thanks,

Johnny

[KevinWyjad]

Hi Jason, I'm also trying to do this same thing. Did you sort it out, and if so, would you mind sharing?

[MaxPetri]

It's 2024, and still useful, any chance you are still in the business and you can forward the toolbox to me too?

TYIA

Max

[David_Kimball]

For anyone coming across this question (8 years later), this functionality is now available in the ArcGIS Pro Merge (Data Management) tool: https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/data-management/merge.htm

The tool has an "Add source information to output" checkbox - if you check it, it'll add a field named MERGE_SRC to the output:

The values in the MERGE_SRC field will indicate the input dataset path or layer name that is the source of each record in the output.

When I used it, I added layers to the tool from my Map, and the values in the resulting MERGE_SRC field looked like "GroupName\LayerName" (as named in the Map's Contents list). I haven't tried it with data added to the tool directly from browsing - maybe it puts the full pathname if you do it that way.