Polygons with NULL or EMPTY geometry (negative area)

[RafaeldePedro]

Hello,

I have a polygon feature class which contains features created on Field Maps and Collector on a layer in  a Hosted Feature Service that was published from ArcMap (also a feature class in ArcMap at time of publishing to AGOL).

When getting all the information back to ArcGIS Pro (or ArcMap), the polygons behave in an odd way, for example: turning on labels does not work and nothing is on display on the map; when zooming in the features disappear (only in ArcMap not in ArcGIS Pro), and when using 'calculate geometry' in the attribute table, the area comes negative and I get the error message about having a NULL or EMPTY geometry (see screenshot attached).

However, if I add the polygon layer directly from AGOL onto ArcGIS Pro or ArcMap, everything (geometry and labels) displays correctly.

Does anyone know what could be the cause for this behaviour?

Thank you,

Rafa

[DanPatterson · Accepted solution]

a negative area suggests that the outer rings are going in the opposite direction from what Pro expects, but sources of bad geometry can be numerous

Checking and repairing geometries—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

enterprise gdb's try to fix those during several geoprocessing operations (some examples in the links).

A good Repair Geometry would be a useful step in your workflow

[RafaeldePedro]

Ok thank you - I could've sworn I had already been trying the repair geometry tool and that's why I brought the problem to ESRI Community. I thought I'd give it another try to a new feature class exported from AGOL, same issue, and the tool did the job! 

Should've made sure I checked that first, my bad.

Thank you though 🙂