topic Re: Joining data does not work unless I retype the data in Excel in State & Local Government Questions https://community.esri.com/t5/state-local-government-questions/joining-data-does-not-work-unless-i-retype-the/m-p/340923#M2087 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>Bring the excel file into a geodatabase using the Excel to Table tool., then confirm field contents between the two files. &nbsp; If you have to convert case or standardize case, in either or both tables, you will have to add new fields and correct the situation.&nbsp; Also check for errors arising extra spaces at the end/beginning of your text entries (fix with strip() in the field calculator)</P></BODY></HTML> Wed, 21 Mar 2018 22:18:24 GMT DanPatterson_Retired 2018-03-21T22:18:24Z Joining data does not work unless I retype the data in Excel https://community.esri.com/t5/state-local-government-questions/joining-data-does-not-work-unless-i-retype-the/m-p/340921#M2085 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>I am joining data from a .txt file to a county shapefile. When I validate the join, it shows no matches. I found that if I retype&nbsp;a County Name in Excel that it will join that one record. So to fix my issue, I have been retyping every single county name and then joining that new txt file in ArcMap. This is fine for right now, but I would like to know how to quickly resolve this issue in ArcMap or Excel so I can stop manually typing the county names again. I have tried Copy and Pasting and many other ways to quickly duplicate the whole Field. Any Ideas?</P></BODY></HTML> Wed, 21 Mar 2018 12:53:02 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/state-local-government-questions/joining-data-does-not-work-unless-i-retype-the/m-p/340921#M2085 NikAnderson2 2018-03-21T12:53:02Z Re: Joining data does not work unless I retype the data in Excel https://community.esri.com/t5/state-local-government-questions/joining-data-does-not-work-unless-i-retype-the/m-p/340922#M2086 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>We don't have much to work on with your description?&nbsp; There could be a lot of reasons why joins are not matching...Data Types, Punctuation, Null values, Case Sensitivity...&nbsp; Typically I do not even attempt to join from a text file because of its many nuances.&nbsp;</P><P></P><P>Give this try:</P><P></P><P>Import your text file into MS Access Database as a table.&nbsp; After which make sure you County field is the same Data Type as the field you are trying to join to.&nbsp; Bring in this table into Arc Map then try your join again.</P><P></P><P>Possibly when going through this exercise you may discover what is preventing the join.</P><P></P><P></P><P>PS.... Realized that you are joining to a shape file... make sure your field names are less than 8 characters....</P></BODY></HTML> Wed, 21 Mar 2018 14:36:20 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/state-local-government-questions/joining-data-does-not-work-unless-i-retype-the/m-p/340922#M2086 TedKowal 2018-03-21T14:36:20Z Re: Joining data does not work unless I retype the data in Excel https://community.esri.com/t5/state-local-government-questions/joining-data-does-not-work-unless-i-retype-the/m-p/340923#M2087 <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY><P>Bring the excel file into a geodatabase using the Excel to Table tool., then confirm field contents between the two files. &nbsp; If you have to convert case or standardize case, in either or both tables, you will have to add new fields and correct the situation.&nbsp; Also check for errors arising extra spaces at the end/beginning of your text entries (fix with strip() in the field calculator)</P></BODY></HTML> Wed, 21 Mar 2018 22:18:24 GMT https://community.esri.com/t5/state-local-government-questions/joining-data-does-not-work-unless-i-retype-the/m-p/340923#M2087 DanPatterson_Retired 2018-03-21T22:18:24Z