topic Re: Field Length/Precision Display in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Field Length/Precision Display

m3 — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:16:10 GMT

Can anyone explain this?

In the field it displays 48.3 and then when you click on the field to edit it it displays a bunch of 0s down to the subatomic level.

I've run round(field, 1) on it and and manually typed the numbers in and it still does this

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Re: Field Length/Precision Display

Robert_LeClair — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:50:29 GMT

Likely your numeric field type is Float and is expected behavior for float storage. One option is to the change the display formatting by opening the Fields Designer for the layer. In the Fields Designer, locate the Number Format column and double click that cell for the attribute field. Then click the 3 dots to open the Number Format pane. Change the Rounding for decimal places to 1 and then click OK. This should remove the "subatomic" number format.

Re: Field Length/Precision Display

m3 — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 18:05:00 GMT

It still does the same thing after changing that setting and restarting Pro.

As a side note, we haven't been able to actually create a numeric field that only has 1 decimal place, it keeps defaulting to whatever the default it.

Re: Field Length/Precision Display

EdenRotonda — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:59:10 GMT

Did you confirm that you are using Float? If you are, you can always trying converting the field to Double instead as Double is 64-bit and is more precise than a Float. You can do this by making a new numeric field with the Double data type and then use Calculate Field to transfer over your Float values.

Re: Field Length/Precision Display

m3 — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 21:32:22 GMT

They are both Double already

Re: Field Length/Precision Display

Robert_LeClair — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 21:52:25 GMT

Even as a Double (64‑bit), this can still happen. Double is binary floating point, so many decimal values (including 48.3) cannot be stored exactly; Pro may show a nicely rounded display (48.3), but when you click into the edit control it can reveal the raw stored IEEE‑754 approximation, which looks like a long decimal. This is expected behavior, not something Round(field, 1) will permanently “clean up.”

If your goal is “never see the long value even when editing” - Use a formatted text field for editing/display with an Arcade expression in a new field - Text($feature.DBH_OLD, "#.0") as suggested here - Solved: Decimal Places in Attribute Pane - Esri Community

Re: Field Length/Precision Display

SSWoodward — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 19:14:41 GMT

What workspace type are you using?

Re: Field Length/Precision Display

m3 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 19:57:02 GMT

What do you mean?

Re: Field Length/Precision Display

SSWoodward — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:28:41 GMT

Are you in a fileGDB? An enterprise GDB?

Re: Field Length/Precision Display

m3 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:56:40 GMT

Enterprise SDE (Oracle)

Re: Field Length/Precision Display

SSWoodward — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 22:01:48 GMT

Got it. I ask because you mentioned you "haven't been able to actually create a numeric field that only has 1 decimal place". Users will often try to set precision and scale in fileGDB or mobileGDB where those configuration options are not available and will always be set to the default defined in the ArcGIS field data types.

You should be able to configure this in an Enterprise Geodatabase. How are you going about creating your fields?

We recently enhanced the Feature Class and Table Wizards to allow for custom scale and precision values during table creation. Previously, you would have needed to use the Add Field GP tool, or altered the values in the Fields View before any data was present in the table.