topic How to delete a point but keep its attribute table data? in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

How to delete a point but keep its attribute table data?

Anonymous User — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 20:15:35 GMT

I am posting this question here because I'm not sure where else to post it. If this is the wrong place, my apologies.

I have a feature class with around 16,000 points. There are 57 points that are associated with outdated locations. What they want me to do is disable those 57 points from drawing geometry on a map, but keep them in the attribute table. They want to keep the data in the table so that they can refer back to the missing points, but they don’t want the points to display anywhere on a map since their true locations are unknown. I need to do this in the actual feature class and not a map file. Any ideas on how to do this?

I tried to follow these directions, but I wasn’t successful. https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/189019/is-it-possible-to-delete-geometry-create-null-but-retain-the-feature-row

Any help would be much appreciated!

Re: How to delete a point but keep its attribute table data?

DarrenWiens2 — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 20:30:52 GMT

My guess is that you're looking to set a definition query, which creates a filtered view of your data. The features that meet the query criteria are shown on the map and table, but all the features remain in the feature class.

Alternatively, you may want to change the layer symbology to only display the relevant points, keeping everything in the attribute table, but only displaying the features you want.

You will not be able to delete a geographic feature and keep the table record, however. edit: reading through your link, it appears it may be possible, but my opinion is that it's a hacky way to organize your data.

Re: How to delete a point but keep its attribute table data?

JMCM — Sat, 24 May 2025 09:48:36 GMT

I know this is an old thread, but I'm answering for those who Googled this like me. I have points of an unknown location that are sitting at 0,0 that I'd rather have just stay off the map.

It's not recommend that you have coordinate-less data, but if you must, the way I found to do this was:

1. Export the data you'd be removing into a table

2. QA that table to make sure it's correct - in fact, ideally, back up the whole layer too

3. Select and remove the data you need to get rid of

4. Re-append this data from the exported table (which should be easy, since it's the same schema) back into the layer