topic Trouble joining table in Mapping Questions

Trouble joining table

Anonymous User — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 20:20:46 GMT

Original User: hhurst4

I am trying to do just a basic US county thematic map and join population data to the county boundary file. The source data to join is in Excel and seems to convert well using the conversion tool. ArcGIS 10.2 seems to force me into a default.gdb. I can't just save it as a table for some reason-- so I go that route letting it save to default.gdb. I can add the table and open it and it looks fine. When I try to join the table of data to the county boundary layer I can see the table but no fields appear in the dropdown. I have attached a print screen where we see no fields and the mxd. We tried opening and reopening the map project but still cannot see the table fields in the join dialogue box.

Re: Trouble joining table

JeffGiesler — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 21:37:19 GMT

Hunter,
Take a look at the column headings in your excel table. If there are any spaces or weird characters them the join may not work or the fields will not show up. This has happened to us a few times and that was usually the problem. A way to check to see if you if you excel sheet is causing the problem is to export it to a database table. you can right click the excel in the TOC and go to export data. I find that it that fails there is usually something going on in my excel table. Another possible cause is that your field types don't match up.
Cheers,
Jeff

Re: Trouble joining table

Anonymous User — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 13:14:52 GMT

Original User: hhurst4

Hi Jeff-

We thought that could be the case but the headings are pretty plain-- no weird characters or spaces and short labels. However, the format in one of the fields (the first column) was a "custom" format in Excel to keep the leading zeros on state/county identifier codes and we think this could be the problem.

Hunter

Re: Trouble joining table

JeffGiesler — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 20:24:31 GMT

Hunter,
Did you get it figured out? I tried to bring in your excel field and the first column (FipsCode) came across as a double. I imagine this is your problem. I don't what the actual fix for this would be but if you add a new row right under your heading, populate it with text (ie. eee). Then import the excel into ArcMap. The FipsCode will now be a string type.
Hope you have already figured this out.
Cheers,
Jeff