CSV Display XY Issues

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02-06-2019 11:30 AM
AnnaTomczyk
New Contributor

Hi there, I am trying to make a map of turtle locations in a wetland area. I want to add GPS coordinates, ID numbers and dates as a shapefile to my map, but I have run into some issues getting the csv from Excel to load properly in ArcMap 10.6.

I have been able to add the csv, but then I try to display x,y data and when I go to select the LAT/LONG values from the drop down menu, the only options are "field 5" through "field 178" with some numbers missing in between. I have not been able to figure this issue out, but I know something is definitely wrong here. I then try to move on and select "ok" to see what happens, and I get a warning message that the "table does not have an object ID field". I have tried to create an object ID field, but this doesn't seem to fix the problem. Arc then adds the data to my table of contents as an "X Y Event Source", but the points do not display in the data frame. I have tried to export the this data as a shapefile and it works, but when added to the TOC the points still do not display.  I go to check the attribute table, and find that my data is crammed into one event with many fields labeled as "field 1...2...3" etc. My 4 Excel headings are fields 1-4, and then the data that are under each Excel heading are the rest of the fields, except for the dates. I will attach some screenshots if anyone wants to take a look. I have not found any mention of an issue like this in my searching.

 

Some things I have tried with no luck include:

-reformatting all of the headings in Excel to "text" instead of "general"

-reformatting the LAT and LONG columns as "number" with at least 8 decimal places

-no foreign symbols, no spaces, no more than 9 characters (other than LAT/LONG)

-save the file as a CSV with no spaces, file name "New_CSV_3_1_REDO"

-changing the coordinate system to GCS North American 83

-I've also tried saving the data as dbase and text files

Thank you so much for helping me out!

The attached files are the display xy dialogue box and the incorrect attribute table .

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2 Replies
MelitaKennedy
Esri Notable Contributor

It looks like it's not finding an end-of-line character so you get one event with a lot of attributes. 

What happens if you do a save as of the .csv into a .txt file (make sure line wrapping is turned off to see if it shows the wrong formatting) and try importing that? Or pull the csv into Excel, again checking the formatting and importing or re-saving it out as .csv?

Melita

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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

it also looks like your longitude fields are left justified, suggesting that they are actual text representations of numbers.  You would have to add a numeric field and calculate new values into it using the 'float' function to convert to float/double

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