topic Re: Basic Census Join Problem in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Basic Census Join Problem

EthanGlaudemans — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 02:50:08 GMT

I'm trying to join a census block shapefile, taken from here, with a census data table found here. The problem is the attribute tables don't align, in particular their GEOIDs. I've got no idea what to do, is it a problem with my data sources? Pictured below are the two hyperlinks, as well as the attribute tables from my two sources of data.

Re: Basic Census Join Problem

DanPatterson — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 09:55:53 GMT

If one file from Alabama and one from Texas? If so, you can't perform a "join" perhaps a "merge".

Join is used to associate attributes to a base file for an area

Add Join (Data Management)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

Merge combines things spatially

Merge (Data Management)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

Re: Basic Census Join Problem

EthanGlaudemans — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 14:19:25 GMT

Hi Dan, thanks for the reply. I'm only using the 2020 shapefile, so just downloading the Texas blocks. A merge wouldn't work as the data I'm pulling from the census is only a table, so I need to use the GEOID to match the rows of data with the corresponding census block in the shapefile data. If you wanted to give it a try it should be easy to reach where I am, I'm thinking I'm just using the wrong data somehow but I'm not sure where else to get a shapefile for Dallas census blocks.

Re: Basic Census Join Problem

DanPatterson — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 14:27:19 GMT

not sure what is going on, but what I saw in your image was data from two separate geographic areas, which obviously isnt going to work

Re: Basic Census Join Problem

EthanGlaudemans — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 14:29:07 GMT

Definitely not, the census blocks I downloaded are for all of Texas while the census data is for Dallas County, so my idea was to clean the data if needed then do a join for the two so just the census blocks from dallas county would be joined + exported as a new file.

Re: Basic Census Join Problem

DavidPike — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 21:09:46 GMT

If there's no common field to match to or a logical way to create a common field e.g.

table 1 - GEOID000567

table 2 - 567

-> Create new calculated field for table 2 and then match against -> 'GEOID000' + [table2]

Other than manually adding a matching attribute then joining - you'll need to find a new polygon data source. I would imagine there's many alternatives.