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Attempting to Create Temporal Layer Merge Creating Null Values

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02-14-2023 02:52 PM
GroundworkORVGIS
Emerging Contributor

I am trying to merge US Census data from 1930-2010, so I can create a temporal layer that shows how the populations changed over time. I have a census layer for each decade and when I merge them I get null values for all the datasets aside from the first one in the merge. I particularly need the % Non-White field. I checked the data types and they are all numeric. I tried appending and that didn't solve the issue. I also tried joining that got nulls again. Is there another way I can create a temporal display without having the layers combined? Maybe this isn't possible because the size of the census blocks have changed significantly over time. I'm going to try to export the merged table into excel and copy and paste the percent non-white numbers from the original layers tomorrow. That should work, but it's not the most efficient.

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2 Replies
Kepa
by Esri Contributor
Esri Contributor

Hello @GroundworkORVGIS,

As I understand, Append tool is the way to go. If field names do not match you should use field mapping to set source/target fields.  Append will always modifiy the target feature class.  I'm not sure about the temporal layer you mentioned... perhaps you could start copying first decade into memory workspace.

Regards,

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GroundworkORVGIS
Emerging Contributor

When I removed the 1930 dataset it ended up working properly with append. 1930 wasn't vital, so I'm just going without it.

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