EASTING AND NORTHING TO LAT AND LONG

[francescarusso]

Hi,

sorry again for the very basic answer. Unluckily I do not use everyday  the GIS so sometimes I struggle even with something I have already done. Is anyone aware of how to convert easting and northing values (I have thousands of values!) into Lat and Long as I need DD for the GIS and my coordinates are in metres.

Many thanks for all your suggestions.

Francesca

[AdrianWelsh · Accepted solution]

There are many different ways to do this.

One way is to change your map projection in ArcGIS (right click on Layer in the Table of Contents and go to Properties then click on the Coordinate System tab) (Specifying a coordinate system—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop ) to a coordinate system that uses Lat/Long. Then you can Add XY values to your features: Add XY Coordinates—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

[francescarusso]

Thank you very much.

Francesca

[NeilAyres]

Sorry, but this is not the correct way to "change a coordinate system".

Do NOT redefine the coordinate system to something it is not.

1. Use the project tool, to create a new feature in the coordinate system of choice (in your case GCS).

or

2. Load the metres based data (I hope you know what this coord sys is, UTM perhaps) into ArcMap, then change the coordinate system of the data frame to a GCS based system. Then you can export the data in the CRS of the DF.

[AbhishekRathi1]

Dear Neil,

It won't change the projection it will visually show you that information as you are changing information of data frame not of your layer. The bottom right corner where map unit is their that part will only get changed.

[NeilAyres]

Changing the display units can, sort of, enable you to measure stuff, but its not very accurate imho.

Besides, the question was about changing the coord sys from a meters based system to GCS.

[AbhishekRathi1]

Dear Francesca,

You can on the fly change the units

By going in to layer properties and then go to general in unit section change the display unit as per your need.