topic Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields in ArcGIS Pro Questions

ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

JasonMenard1 — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 15:49:17 GMT

Has anyone ever had issues importing a .csv as events into ArcMap (or Pro) and having it interpret String fields with a length of 8000? This winds up creating viable feature classes with the same issue that break most geoprocessing tools because of the field lengths. I'd love to know how to avoid this.

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

DanPatterson_Retired — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 15:54:10 GMT

sample of a few rows?

sounds like you may be missing newline delimiters

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

AdrianWelsh — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 16:22:49 GMT

Jason,

I've had this happen a few times but have not found any issues with geoprocessing tools. Which tools are not working for you?

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

TimOrmsby — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 18:29:18 GMT

Hi Jason, this bug has been in the system a while. It's marked as medium severity. If it's breaking gp tools please contact tech support and reference bug number BUG-000086039 so the severity can be upgraded.

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

DanPatterson_Retired — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 20:09:37 GMT

That bug has been around for a while. I haven't experienced it with csv files using ArcGIS Pro. I have created them using text editors and as the outputs from numpy and other programs.

How was your csv file created? From Excel or some other program?

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

KoryKramer — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 04:03:56 GMT

I haven't tried this, but you could create a schema.ini file that defines the exact widths you want to define for each field in the csv that you're importing, and make sure that schema.ini is in the same folder as the .csv.

Here's some doc: Adding an ASCII or text file table—Help | ArcGIS Desktop

Here's a quick example I had sitting around in a folder:

Hope this helps!

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

AdrianWelsh — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 01:03:23 GMT

Dan, I get the 8000 characters thing from CSVs and my CSVs are created from Excel. So, maybe Excel is the culprit here...

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

AdrianWelsh — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 01:04:51 GMT

Kory, that sounds like an awesome work around. If it worked well, it would be good to add that to the bug information.

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 01:36:02 GMT

excel seems to be the culprit. But I use excel or quattro pro to produce csvs all the time but they go to numpy structured arrays and I usually set the dtype myself. I will be paying attention more to np.genfromtxt to see the dtypes produced.

There is a related issue with file gdb's with TableToNumPy array. So whatever is going on needs to be monitored if working in that environment. PS, a schema is like setting a dtype for a structured/recarray

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

KarinBodtker — Wed, 13 May 2020 22:46:48 GMT

It works! I tried it today. Just make sure the schema.ini file is in the same folder as the csv or txt file you are importing/adding.

Re: ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap .csv imports 8000-character String fields

CordulaGöke — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 11:11:00 GMT

I just have it for the first time after several years using .csv with text columns as the most reliable format for joins. What a bummer that such a bug does not get addressed and thanks for the workaround! My first attempt was to export the csv to a dbf and set the text length to 254. It still did not work. The join-values come from the file that I want to link back to. So next attempt in a new project did work with the newly created dbf but not the original csv.