Dear Joseph,
Thank you very much for the response. I downloaded the add-in you recommended, but it falls short of what I was hoping for. It allows me to query my shapefiles table on the values in a single field, then displays the query result in a little window. I did not see any way to force Explorer to display only the filtered records from my shapefile, i.e., the query results don't affect the records displayed. I did see that Explorer would highlight and jump one by one to each of the filtered records--like a kind of manic slideshow--but this is not a useful feature for my purposes.
I really need the capability to filter on several fields of my shapefile table simultaneously, and I need to then be able to navigate the filtered shapefiles normally using Explorer. If I could output the Query results as their own shapefile and then load them back by themselves then that would do the trick, but I didn't see any such capability built in.
I tried simply opening the database table (*.dbx) using Microsoft Access. This allowed me to filter the shapefile table to my hearts content. Unfornately, trying to save these filtered tables in Access and open them in Explorer is pointless, as the sequence gets broken. Hence the need for a real shapefile editor.
This is an unfunded project at present, so I do not have the budget to purchase ArcGIS Desktop. That may change if I can demonstrate a marketable product, but for now all the R&D is coming out of my own pocket. Hence the need for a free shapefile editor, at least until I get the budget to purchase the real thing.
Any further thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
John
