Background-
I study seagrass in an estuary near Fort Myers, Florida. A colleague sends me a .shp file which contains a list of named points and their coordinates. I upload the points to my handheld GPS, navigate to them, and record characteristics of the seagrass (density, height, etc.) at each point. I enter those data into an excel spreadsheet.
I intended to turn my excel tables into map layers using the import XY data function. Try as I might to specify the correct coordinate and projection systems, my points invariably ended up clustered into a pinhead sized area hundreds of miles south of their real location. Finally I was able to get my data in the right places not by creating a new layer from the excel sheet, but by joining the excel data to the correctly projected points in the empty .shp file that my colleague had sent me earlier.
Now I am quality-checking the data and finding a few small mistakes in the attribute tables that I need to fix. I wish I could just click on a cell in the attribute table and type in the correct value, but apparently it's not that easy. Here's what I'm trying to do now, and what is happening:
1. I open my map.
2. I click "Editor toolbar"
3. I select "Start Editing" from the editor drop-down menu. I get a start editing window that says, "This map contains data from more than one database or folder. Please choose the layer or workspace to edit."
4. I Choose "MAY_2013_Quadzilla_PTS" which is one of the points layers I made by joining my data to my coordinates. I hit "OK"
5. I hit the "Attributes" icon on the Editor toolbar. A little window pops up on the side of the screen but it's empty. Nothing happens when I click the buttons in that window, so I close it.
6. I right click on "MAY_2013_Quadzilla_PTS" in the table of contents to open up the attribute table. I click on the cells in the table that I want to change and I start typing. Nothing happens.
7. I select the column with the data and I want to change. I pick "find and replace" from the table menu. I tell it to find "0" and replace it with "bare" because that's one of the changes I want to make. It says, "no records found." However, if I try to just "find" instead of replace a "0" it has no trouble finding a "0."
8. I get frustrated and go online here to ask for help.
If y'all have any tips for making changes to attribute tables in ArcGIS 10.1, let me know.
Thanks,
James