XY Data Points coming up in the wrong place

[McKenna]

I have a data set with Longitude and Latitude in decimal degrees. I had no problem getting the CSV into Arc and did Display XY data to create a feature class. I made sure the projection was WGS 1984 (it matches the other layers I have as well) yet the points are coming up off the western coast of Africa (they should be in Joshua Tree National Park).

It has been a little over a year since I booted up Arc and I just know I am missing something simple. Any help you can give would be great!

[DanPatterson]

did you specify longitude for the X and latitude for the Y

[McKenna]

I did! The coordinates would still be wrong even if I hadn't though. I have tried using a lot of the solutions in other posts as well and still no luck.

[DanPatterson · Accepted solution]

Open a new map... no basemaps, add just the Joshua tree layer and any other layers that you created that work.  Make the even layer setting the coordinate as before and ensuring that the map and event layer are set to decimal degrees wgs84 datum

[McKenna]

This got me at least in the right region! (Thank you!). However, now the points are in the right spot but all lined up (on the right) rather than in the wrong spot and spaced out according to their location (on the left). I wonder if it has something to do with how it is being projected?

[DanPatterson]

Can you post the csv, just the coordinates if the data is proprietary something isn't right with something

[McKenna]

I just had my ah ha moment! You were right and it was something with the data: the previous "care taker" of the data chopped the coordinates down about six decimal places for convince. I went back to the original data set and correct it and now it is as right as rain!

Thank you so much for the help! I really appreciate it 🙂