Spatial Join points and polygons

[GeoOwl33]

Hi, I need some help with setting up a work flow. I am using ArcPro 2.8.2

I have a set of  data points that I need to find out which country they fall within. I do have a country polygon shapefile as well to use as the reference. My initial thought is that I would first have to do a spatial join. Would this be a one-to-one or a one-to-many join operation? This part seems straight forward to me that after the spatial join it will create a new feature class of the combined features. The next steps is where I am lost. How can I populate the country field in my original point feature from the joined feature class?

Thank you so much for your help

[DanPatterson]

Did you try spatially joining the polygon to the points?  

Spatial joins by feature type—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

Spatial Join (Analysis)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

[GeoOwl33]

Hi Dan,

Yes I did run a spatial join Target = the data points Join feature = Country shape file Join operation = one-to-many Match operation = intersect

Now I have a newly created feature class of the joined features. and my question is how do I populate the country field in my original point data feature class ?

[DanPatterson]

Is there not a common ID field between the original and new? which you can use for an attribute join?

[GeoOwl33]

Yes there is. However I did find the too called " Join Attributes From Polygon" which did the trick and then I was able to just do a simple field calc.

Now If I were to have a polygon feature that I wanted to know which country it fell within how could I do that. I do have a world countries polygon shapefile to use as a reference