I have an Excel file with X/Y (Lat/Lon) coordinates. I need to recreate a polygon shapefile and/or feature class. I've looked up some solutions centered around Python and XY Point to Polygon feature. Does/could anyone point me in the right direction or do I have to physically draw 3,000+ polygons?
WHat does the geoprocessing tool Display XY coordinates do?
Points To Line (Data Management)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation
will enable you to create polylines from points, if, the points are associated with a known polygon geometry. If the polylines are closed-loop then they can be converted to polygons.
You definitely should not "physically draw [tons of] polygons", but Python will probably be necessary. You would need a table with the points for all polygons (x,y) as well as some way to identify the start and stop points for each polygon. For example, if each polygon is a rectangle/square you would have 4 vertices per polygon. So 3,000 polygons X 4 points/polygon = 12,000 points. That's your starting point. Note that every polygon does technically record the start and stop point twice, so you would have 3,000 X 5 points/ polygon = 15,000 points.
If you can post a portion of your spreadsheet that would be helpful.