idea Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

DanielleKulas — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 20:44:40 GMT

Thank you so much for adding the Find and Replace function to the attribute table in Pro, it's super useful! In ArcMap, we had the ability to find and replace contents of the attribute table with nothing if we wanted to, but that option is not available in Pro currently from what I can tell. Any way to bring this back?

My use case is that I'm removing some unwanted HTML from my attribute table. When I set up the find and replace, the arrow(s) are inactive with no value in the Replace box. As a workaround I've been replacing with a space but it would be better if I could just remove the HTML altogether as I could with ArcMap.

Thanks for your consideration!

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

DanPatterson — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 21:32:25 GMT

two double(single) quotes is equivalent to an empty string eg ""

it is not the same as None since there is only one None

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

DanielleKulas — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 21:38:30 GMT

Oh, sorry I should have mentioned that I tried that. It put the "" in the attribute as two quotes though:

Before

After

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

DanPatterson — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 22:05:51 GMT

hmmmm Definitely a good idea!

in the interim a little field calculation

obviously replacing your field name for More_Junk but leaving the enclosing ! !

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

DanielleKulas — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 22:29:20 GMT

Thanks! I knew there must be a better workaround! I appreciate it.

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table - Status changed to: In Product Plan

KoryKramer — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 20:38:09 GMT

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

LakshmiSankaran — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 13:48:31 GMT

Yes, please do bring back the ability to replace characters in the entire table with a blank as is available in ArcMap. We sometimes have to eliminate all special characters in a table in all the fields. This is one step in ArcMap, but "calculating" a replace in multiple fields is too time consuming.

Thanks
Lakshmi Sankaran

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table - Status changed to: Implemented

KoryKramer — Thu, 13 May 2021 20:44:31 GMT

Implemented in ArcGIS Pro 2.8.

See and (5:51) in the video.

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

DanielleKulas — Thu, 13 May 2021 20:55:05 GMT

Thank you! 🤓

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

KoryKramer — Thu, 13 May 2021 20:57:35 GMT

Thank YOU for pointing it out.

It isn't often in life when you want to replace something with nothing, but when you do, it sure is handy!

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

LakshmiSankaran — Thu, 13 May 2021 20:58:57 GMT

Thank you!!

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

GISJess — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 01:31:07 GMT

@KoryKramer

Is there an option to search for the empty cells, and replace them with data?

Ex: We try to put 'n/a' when we are out taking data in the field on Field Maps, but sometimes responses are left blank. When turning in a report, we would like to not have blanks, so it can become tedious when having to fill those in one by one.

I realize in hindsight, I could set a default answer, or make the question mandatory on Field Maps.

Thank you.

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

KoryKramer — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 12:52:32 GMT

@GISJess You could use Select by Attributes to select records where the values in a field are null.

With the selection in place, then Calculate Field to populate those values all at once instead of one by one.

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

GISJess — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 20:42:38 GMT

@KoryKramer Thank you. The cells I had were completely blank, no <Null>, nada.

So I ended up using Select By Attributes, but set the field 'is equal' to and left the third dropdown blank.

This selected all the records with blanks. Yay.

Then I used the Calculate Field, as you suggested, with this formula:

!Weight_g!.replace(" ","N/A") and it worked. Double yay!

Thanks for your quick response, it helped me solve this issue much faster. 🙂

It would be nice to have the find/replace be able to also find the blanks to make the process faster.

Re: Find and replace with nothing in Pro attribute table

KoryKramer — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 23:10:42 GMT

@GISJess

"It would be nice to have the find/replace be able to also find the blanks to make the process faster."

Sneak preview of ArcGIS Pro 3.1, scheduled for February 2023: