topic Re: Converting Zipcodes to Polygons in Data Management Questions

Converting Zipcodes to Polygons

HilaryZainabou — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 13:48:50 GMT

Greetings,

I have two files I am trying to join so that I can look at some program data by zipcode. I have found a csv file of zipcode with lat/long and I have a data file with zipcodes only.

I uploaded my zipcode w/ lat/long file to Arc Online with the intention of joining my data file to it so that I could create visualizations. Unfortunately, the zipcode lat/long file renders as point data only and does not create polygons.

I would really appreciate some assistance in figuring out what I am doing wrong. I also have Arc Desktop on my computer. I had intended to upload my zipcode w/ lat/long files to Arc online so that I could convert to a .shp file for use on my desktop.

Any assistance would be supper helpful. I have attached the zipcode w/ lat/long files.

Please help!

Re: Converting Zipcodes to Polygons

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 13:59:47 GMT

search using .... zip code shapefile u.s.

https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=8d2012a2016e484dafaac0451f9aea24

plus more

Then you should be able to join attributes to it if it is in the correct form

Re: Converting Zipcodes to Polygons

HilaryZainabou — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 14:15:15 GMT

Thanks for your reply Dan. I downloaded and opened the file in Arc Desktop then added my data file and joined the tables. My initial goal is to create a chloropleth map. Looking at the new table all looks good, but when I go to edit the layer it gives me an error. I feel like I am missing something so simple. It has been some time since I worked with the Dekstop version.

Re: Converting Zipcodes to Polygons

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 14:41:55 GMT

convert your csv file to a shapefile or a featureclass... simply right-click on the layer, then data, export data and specify your type and filename at the bottom

Re: Converting Zipcodes to Polygons

LukeSturtevant — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 14:47:03 GMT

It looks like you are attempting to edit the csv table. Export it to a geodatabase table from the attribute table menu:

Then it will have assigned OIDs and you should be able to edit it.

Re: Converting Zipcodes to Polygons

LukeSturtevant — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 14:49:57 GMT

I'm a little confused as to how you would attempt to create polygon's from that CSV you uploaded. Some of the entries only have a single LAT\LONG entry so you would only have a single point for that entry. Each zip code entry needs to have 3 or more LAT\LONG entries to make a polygon.

Re: Converting Zipcodes to Polygons

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 15:03:26 GMT

it appears from the records that the csv file contains multiple points with the same coordinates...all you need is one point in a point file to join it to a polygon file using a common key field...which I presume is the postal code.. and hoping that they are in the exact same format and level of detail

Re: Converting Zipcodes to Polygons

LukeSturtevant — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 15:29:29 GMT

Oh okay I misunderstood what Hilary was looking to do with the CSV file she uploaded. I thought she was attempting to create polygons from the lat\long points in the csv. Maybe she is attempting to generate a point feature class from the CSV and use a spatial join with one-to-many join operation on an existing polygon feature?

Re: Converting Zipcodes to Polygons

DanPatterson_Retired — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 15:35:24 GMT

Is suspect it may have been a polygon file in csv format... sort of useless... hence the link amongst many, that allows you to download polygon geometry. That is why I wondered about the duplicate records, I suspect that each polygon point has the same attributes for each point.