Formatting Excel column to match a Text Field with 30 characters

[BrianOberdorf]

I want to create a relationship and join between a point featureclass  and a table generated from Excel.  The join field in GIS is Text Field of 30 length.

The excel table imports as a table to have a length of 255.  Ideally I wouldn't have to change it manually, but when I tried it wouldn't let me do it anyway.

Is there a way to either format the Excel table, or force the join field to be the length to match the Featureclass.  I cant change the Featureclass field as it is used in many other situations.

[DanPatterson]

If formatting the text field in excel to a specified cell width loses its specification, then it is probably isn't honored or an issue.

You can only alter field widths when the field contains no data at all.

If the two fields are participating in a join (eg. table to featureclass table) then the featureclass table properties will take precedence).

If the field width is a real issue, then add a new field in the point featureclass table of the desired width and copy (via the field calculator) the table values into the new field.

Since the 255 character is not causing a "issue" in the sense of interfering with calculations or performance it would probably fall into the "nice" to fix category but not a "need" to fix category