topic Re: ArcGIS Pro Workflow Help: Creating a filtered shapefile copy with custom columns in ArcGIS Pro Questions

ArcGIS Pro Workflow Help: Creating a filtered shapefile copy with custom columns

EthanT — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:36:06 GMT

Hi everyone,

I am working with ArcGIS Pro and need help with a workflow involving shapefiles and attribute tables.

I currently have one shapefile, and I want to create a new copy of it with two specific changes:

Filter Rows: In the new copy, I do not want all the rows to appear—I only want a select subset of rows/features to be included and displayed on the map.
Add Columns: I want to add new columns (attribute fields) directly into this new copy of the shapefile.

I have already tried exporting the attribute table to Excel and using the Join feature, but that workflow did not give me the results I needed. These tables are thousands of lines so a way to mass edit would be needed (to easily perform VLOOKUP's and such to filter the rows).

Could someone explain the best step-by-step method or native tools in ArcGIS Pro to export only the selected rows into a new shapefile and add new columns to the resulting layer?

Re: ArcGIS Pro Workflow Help: Creating a filtered shapefile copy with custom columns

DanPatterson — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:09:48 GMT

Select Layer By Attribute (Data Management Tools) | ArcGIS Pro documentation unless you don't have a clean way of filtering out what you want.

If you already have a table with the columns that you want to add and a common field to use as the join field then use that field. Otherwise, how do you intend to add the columns via a join? or are you looking at a way to calculate values for a field?

Re: ArcGIS Pro Workflow Help: Creating a filtered shapefile copy with custom columns

EthanT — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:20:01 GMT

I guess what I am asking is if there is a way to modify the data/table of a shapefile, such that I can easily delete multiple rows (not filter, it is not clean like that - to actually delete) and add column to it (the data in this column would also have to be entered through x lookups and the like), as join did not work for me