Hi all! I'm a relatively new QGIS/ArcGIS Online user here. I am working on a project that requires mapping various congregations across the United States by zip code or by county boundary. I have come across an issue in my work flow and was hoping some users with more experience could offer some tips.
Here's my issue:
The data I'm working with often has entries that appear to be duplicates. In fact, they are distinct congregations, but based on the fields in the spreadsheet I am using, they appear to be the same. For example, a set of rows looks like this:
| Mount Olive | NJ | 07836 | 1788 | 1790 | 1/1/1788 0:00:00 | 12/31/1790 0:00:00 | MORRIS | | | Methodist |
| Mount Olive | NJ | 07836 | 1788 | 1790 | 1/1/1788 0:00:00 | 12/31/1790 0:00:00 | MORRIS | | | Methodist |
| Mount Olive | NJ | 07836 | 1788 | 1790 | 1/1/1788 0:00:00 | 12/31/1790 0:00:00 | MORRIS | | | Methodist |
| Mount Olive | NJ | 07836 | 1788 | 1790 | 1/1/1788 0:00:00 | 12/31/1790 0:00:00 | MORRIS | | | Methodist |
| Mount Olive | NJ | 07836 | 1788 | 1790 | 1/1/1788 0:00:00 | 12/31/1788 0:00:00 | MORRIS | | | Methodist |
| Mount Olive | NJ | 07836 | 1788 | 1790 | 1/1/1788 0:00:00 | 12/31/1788 0:00:00 | MORRIS | | | Methodist |
| Mount Olive | NJ | 07836 | 1788 | 1790 | 1/1/1788 0:00:00 | 12/31/1788 0:00:00 | MORRIS | | | Methodist |
Here, I am mapping Methodist congregations by county boundary. Because Methodists listed the number of congregations within a county boundary, all of the identification fields for the various congregations in that same county starting and ending the same year appear to be duplicates. However, they are not. So, I need to represent each of these distinct congregations.
When I go to join my .csv with my shapefile of historical county boundaries, QGIS appears to merge the rows that look, like the above example, to be duplicates. Any tips on preventing this and keeping all of the data through this join process?
Thank you!
