Bug with adding XY data?

[HelenGoodchild]

We're using ArcGIS 10.5.1 for an undergraduate class in GIS. In that class four separate people had an issue in adding XY data. In all of these instances, it would plot somewhere wrongly. However, if they went back to the original spreadsheet and changed the column headers from LONG/LAT to X/Y it plotted correctly. It wasn't a simple transposition error of them getting the Xs and Ys the wrong way round as I doubled checked each of them fully.

This seems really odd, and I'd be interested if anyone else has had anything similar. I've had nothing but trouble since our most recent upgrade, so am really considering rolling back versions as it doesn't make for a great learning experience at the moment.

Thanks,

Hen

[XanderBakker]

And the correct coordinate system was assigned in the process and the coordinate system of the data frame wasn't different in such a way that a transformation is required?

[HelenGoodchild]

Yep - WGS84 and they were inputting Lat Longs. We had all the usual suspects in terms of plotting issues across the class in general (people using formulas, columns formatted as text, etc, etc, so I'm usually good at spotting the problem) I tried a few times myself in the class and had the same issues. It didn't work until I changed the names of the field headers in the spreadsheet and re-imported in exactly the same way. It was highly mysterious, and frustrating I can't replicate it!

Cheers,

H

[RebeccaStrauch__GISP]

Maybe they have some extra characters or spaces or some other issue within the field too.  But to eliminate any issues with the software, try running one of the other students "good" spreadsheets on this this machine, and one of the "bad" spreadsheets on a machine that worked.   But my guess is, beside the possible confusion on the names (although I use long/lat), maybe there are some additional characters at the end?  or an extra dot, etc.    For example, if using DMS, maybe there was a forth set of numbers that isn't showing (column not wide enough?).

Anyway, although I haven't tested my own on 10.5.1, seems like if it was a bug, it would have been reported already (popular tool).  I would suggest uploading a sample of the bad spreadsheet so others here can test.

[IanFrakes1]

I found if you use the words "XCOORD" and "YCOORD" in Excel coordinate field titles the software 'recognises' these as Longitude and Latitude coordinates respectively and they are automatically selected in dialog boxes.

Perhaps it's a coincidence and it's actually picking up the unique coordinate data type, we usually work in UTM coordinates. An ESRI developer might step in and solve this mystery.

[Tolo__AdamTolo]

I have also noticed this using ArcGIS Pro 2.1

Steps I took:

- Imported Excel spreadsheet into a table

- Display XY Data and selected X Field as Location_X_Coord and Y Field as Location_Y_Coord

- Gave it a layer name and select the projection GCS_WGS_1984

- Run

Points ended up in the wrong location.

After troubleshooting for a while I tried the same steps as above but with ArcMap 10.3.1 and it worked fine.

So I tried renaming the original fields I had to X & Y and it works fine now.

That's gotta be a bug?