UPDATE: I was able to find a work-around. I've put it at the bottom of this post for anyone who experiences this same issue.
Hello everyone!
I'm attempting to load a dataset (D1) into another dataset (D2) and need all the field types to match. I am attempting to switch several of the fields in D1 from "Long Integer" to "Short Integer" to match D2's "Short" fields. However, when I go to "Add Field" in D1 and select "Short Integer", the resulting field defaults to "Long Integer". I have no idea why this is happening:
This change in types is happening directly after creating the field, and I haven't even begun loading new data into it with the Field Calculator. Does anyone know why this is happening? It's frustrating because I performed about 10 of these conversions before noticing this issue. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
SOLUTION:
When creating the field, if the "Precision" value is 5 or more, the field will default to "Long". For me, the default precision value when selecting "Short" was 0, but I had to change it to 4 to get the "Short" type to stay. Hope this helps someone!
What version of ArcMap?
Hi Amanda,
I'm using 10.6.1. I was able to find a solution which I've posted above. 🙂
Data types in the DBMS—ArcMap | Documentation (arcgis.com)
depends on the destination table type. sometimes field types can be remapped to the closest available type.