topic Re: Combine Two Shapefiles? in ArcGIS Mapping and Charting Questions https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-mapping-and-charting-questions/combine-two-shapefiles/m-p/416483#M1424 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>Why do you want to combine them?</P><P>it is cause overlap&nbsp;or change the shape (union method)</P></BODY></HTML> Sat, 11 Mar 2017 19:45:13 GMT AbdullahAnter 2017-03-11T19:45:13Z Combine Two Shapefiles? https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-mapping-and-charting-questions/combine-two-shapefiles/m-p/416481#M1422 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>I'm new to GIS and have what may be a stupid question. I have two shapefiles, one showing the US states from 1789 and one showing the US states from today. I'd like to combine them into a single file, with a new field indicating the year. I've played with the merge function but that seems to merge them together into a single set of shapes, whereas I want to keep them as distinct sets of data, just in a single file. In SQL terms, I'm looking for a UNION ALL, as opposed to a UNION.</P></BODY></HTML> Sat, 11 Mar 2017 19:07:50 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-mapping-and-charting-questions/combine-two-shapefiles/m-p/416481#M1422 KenFlerlage 2017-03-11T19:07:50Z Re: Combine Two Shapefiles? https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-mapping-and-charting-questions/combine-two-shapefiles/m-p/416482#M1423 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>To keep the instructions simple, I will direct you to two tools in arctoolbox... <A href="http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/latest/tools/data-management-toolbox/add-join.htm">Add Join </A>... and the ... <A href="http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/latest/tools/analysis-toolbox/spatial-join.htm">Spatial Join </A>...</P><P>The most appropriate will depend on your attribute table content and arrangement and the degree to which you can associate geometries between the two time periods.</P></BODY></HTML> Sat, 11 Mar 2017 19:43:56 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-mapping-and-charting-questions/combine-two-shapefiles/m-p/416482#M1423 DanPatterson_Retired 2017-03-11T19:43:56Z Re: Combine Two Shapefiles? https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-mapping-and-charting-questions/combine-two-shapefiles/m-p/416483#M1424 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>Why do you want to combine them?</P><P>it is cause overlap&nbsp;or change the shape (union method)</P></BODY></HTML> Sat, 11 Mar 2017 19:45:13 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-mapping-and-charting-questions/combine-two-shapefiles/m-p/416483#M1424 AbdullahAnter 2017-03-11T19:45:13Z Re: Combine Two Shapefiles? https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-mapping-and-charting-questions/combine-two-shapefiles/m-p/416484#M1425 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>I ended up using the Append function. I used "Add Field" to add a new field to each shapefile, which would identify that shapefile. I then use "Calculate Field" to populate it with said identifier. From there, I just did an append to put them together into a single file. Thanks for the input everyone!</P></BODY></HTML> Mon, 13 Mar 2017 01:50:26 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-mapping-and-charting-questions/combine-two-shapefiles/m-p/416484#M1425 KenFlerlage 2017-03-13T01:50:26Z