https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/join-plss-narrative-description-to-plss-firstdivid/m-p/1664005#M99984 <P>Thanks for the suggestion!! I'm afraid it's going to be something like this. I was able to get ahold of someone who's accomplished this task and she reiterated a few times that it's very complicated, and involves multiple shapefiles, along with database and programming knowledge that I do not have, and involving steps similar to what you mention. I'm going to have to up my game. Thanks again!</P> Thu, 06 Nov 2025 17:36:45 GMT AvaFarouche 2025-11-06T17:36:45Z https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/join-plss-narrative-description-to-plss-firstdivid/m-p/1663596#M99970 <P>Greetings,</P><P>I'm stumped on this and wonder if anyone can just point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance!</P><P>I have a csv to excel table that includes a narrative PLSS land description attribute, i.e., "CO T. 34 N., R. 5 W., New Mexico Principal, Sec. 22". I need to map these parcels. But I am stuck on how to do this. I have the PLSS shapefile to join this data to, but I don't know how to do this practically.</P><P>The PLSS shapefiles themselves of course do not include a narrative description that I can directly join to. The field I want to use is the FIRSTDIVID of the PLSS shapefile. The FIRSTDIVID entry&nbsp;"CO230340N0050W0SN220" corresponds to the narrative land description "CO T. 34 N., R. 5 W., New Mexico Principal, Sec. 22".&nbsp;&nbsp;</P><P>So what's the process I need to use to get those two fields to match up and join? I thought there might be a way to geolocate the land description and then do a spatial join, but I haven't found a Locator for PLSS descriptions. There's probably a way to create the FIRSTDIVID attribute in excel from the land description before importing it into Pro? Or do I need to learn Python to create a new field that translates the narrative into the alphanumeric?</P><P>If anyone can just point me in the right direction I can hopefully figure out the details from there. I know this is an unconventional post here but I am stumped. This is probably something I should know but, well, I don't!</P><P>Thanks!!</P><P>&nbsp;</P> Wed, 05 Nov 2025 17:46:55 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/join-plss-narrative-description-to-plss-firstdivid/m-p/1663596#M99970 AvaFarouche 2025-11-05T17:46:55Z https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/join-plss-narrative-description-to-plss-firstdivid/m-p/1663637#M99972 <P>Perhaps use excel Textsplit function to explode via space character. Then excel concatenate after massaging data to reassemble</P> Wed, 05 Nov 2025 17:50:34 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/join-plss-narrative-description-to-plss-firstdivid/m-p/1663637#M99972 ThomasHoman 2025-11-05T17:50:34Z https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/join-plss-narrative-description-to-plss-firstdivid/m-p/1664005#M99984 <P>Thanks for the suggestion!! I'm afraid it's going to be something like this. I was able to get ahold of someone who's accomplished this task and she reiterated a few times that it's very complicated, and involves multiple shapefiles, along with database and programming knowledge that I do not have, and involving steps similar to what you mention. I'm going to have to up my game. Thanks again!</P> Thu, 06 Nov 2025 17:36:45 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/join-plss-narrative-description-to-plss-firstdivid/m-p/1664005#M99984 AvaFarouche 2025-11-06T17:36:45Z