Finding points in a polygon

[AdenBetman]

Is there a way to find how many points fall within a polygon without creating a new layer like summarize within does?

[Ed_]

Good morning @AdenBetman, yes it is, please look at Select features by location

Cheers

[AdenBetman]

Thank you for responding Ed. I love the profile picture. This just highlights the points for selection no? I should've given more detail, I have a multi-ring buffer with distances of .5, 1, and 1.5 all in miles. I would like to try and find how many points fall within each ring.

[Ed_]

I see in that case, one way could be (granted it will require creating new layers) that split the buffers based on the distance attribute using `Split by Attribute` tool. Then use the `Select by location` tool (as this will not create a new layer) to find/select/highlight points with in each of those individual buffers. 

[Dale_Honeycutt]

I don't think there's a way to do the count without creating a new dataset (layer).  Have you looked at Spatial Join? The Target Features parameter would be your points, the Join Features would be your polygons, Join Operation is 'join one to one', Match Option is Within.  For the Field Map, I'd only keep the object ID of the Join Features.  The output will have Join_Count - the number of points in each polygon.  

It's been a while since I've used Spatial Join, so I'd have to experiment with some actual data (instead of searching my memory bank) to get the exact methodology.  But fer sure Spatial Join will get you there.