failed to build attribute table

[ruthparker]

Hi
I'm trying to build an attribute table for a raster file. I keep getting error 000049 saying that its failed to exectute and to check its a signed 1 band. According to the raster properties it IS a signed 1 band, 32 bit. Its a ridiculously simple raster file showing presence/absence with literally every square assigned 1. Is there any kind of workaround or solution to this?? Would trying to change it to an 8 bit help? I really need to run a reclassify function.
thanks

[YoshiTsuzuki]

Hello
did you solve this problem? I have encountered similar error.
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000049 : Failed to build attribute table
ArcGIS 10.1 Locate topic

Description
The raster attribute table cannot be built on the input raster dataset.

Solution
Check the input raster dataset to make sure that it is a single-band integer dataset;other types of raster datasets do not support raster attribute tables.
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The input raster file in my case is raster file with integer values from 1 t o128, pixel depth is 8 bit. Pixel type is unsigned integer. Any solution or suggestion will be welcomed.

Thanks
Yoshi

[JeffreySwain]

Raster attribute tables cannot be built on floating point rasters to answer the first poster.  In terms of your 8 bit raster, is it single band? Or multiband.  If multiband then it will not take the values.  If you are using single band then what is the format?

[YoshiTsuzuki]

Thank you jbswain for your reply.
Pyramid is "level: 5, resampling: Nearest Neighbor", but I am not sure whether this information is related to single or multi. How can I find it, could you instruct me? Thanks in advance.

Yoshi

[JeffreySwain]

The Pyramid level shouldn't be a factor. I was trying to point out if your raster was a gray scale, single band raster with simply the values indicated then it should work, but if you have more than one band in it, there will not be an attribute table.  For an attribute table to be created, you must have a single band raster with integer values.  So that there will be a 'Grid_code' or value field that can be populated with an integer value.  Then the attribute table can have values added based on that. 

The original poster indicated that they had a raster with 32 bit values, which would not be possible to add an attribute due to the extremely high number of unique values.  Take a look at the help documentation for more information about raster attribute tables.

[YoshiTsuzuki]

Thanks Jbswain for your reply.
I am afraid whether I could understand your advice fully, but I am trying to run Watershed tool of Hydrology tools. The raster "flowdir01" is an input raster of Watershed tool. When I run Watershed, I have received the following error message:

Messages
Executin: Watershed flodir01 pourpoint01 C:\GISdata\Watershed01 Id
Start time: Thu Oct 03 09:02:03 2013
ERROR 999999: Error executing function.
The name of the Field is invalid: valid names may contain letter, numbers or underscores.
ERROR 010419: Unable to build the attribute table of C:\GISdata\Flowdir01 as required by the operation.
Failed to execute (Watershed).
Failed at Thu Oct 03 09:02:13 2013 (Elasped Time: 10.00 seconds)

Before that, in the properties of the raster layer, flowdir01, when I selected "Show: Unique values" at Symbology tab, "Build Raster Attrribute Table" windows appears saying that "Raster attribute table doesn't exist. Do you want to build attribute table?" I have replied "Yes" to this message. After a few seconds, the cursor returned to "Show: Classified". After that, when I "Show: Unique values", the above message always seem to appear, and I am a little confused whether this message really meaning what it seems to say, or raster attribute table is not properly build.

From the error message of Watershed above, the raster attribute table seems to be build after the process above, but may be not appropriately build as described in ERROR 999999, the field name is invalid. If this is correct, please advice me the methods to check this error and to repair this error. Thanks for your replies in advance.

[YoshiTsuzuki]

I attach an image of the raster file, flowdir01.

[YoshiTsuzuki]

I run Phyton to build a raster attribute table, however, unsuccessful:

>>> arcpy.BuildRasterAttributeTable_management("\GISdata\FlowDir01\Flowdir01", "Overwrite")
Runtime error  Traceback (most recent call last):   File "<string>", line 1, in <module>   File "c:\program files (x86)\arcgis\desktop10.1\arcpy\arcpy\management.py", line 12919, in BuildRasterAttributeTable     raise e ExecuteError: ERROR 000049: Failed to build attribute table Failed to execute (BuildRasterAttributeTable). 

ERROR 000049 is "000049 : Failed to build attribute table, Description: The raster attribute table cannot be built on the input raster dataset., Solution: Check the input raster dataset to make sure that it is a single-band integer dataset;other types of raster datasets do not support raster attribute tables."

From the above process, the raster file, flowdir01, should be checked whether a single-band integer dataset or not. This is accordance with the advices from Jbswain. I want to know the method to check the raster file is a single-band integer dataset or not. Thank you for your reply in advance.

[YoshiTsuzuki]

Hi all, I add some information on the raster file for possible solutions:
the raster file, flowdir01, is made as the following:
1) using a DEM file provided at the government website, run the Fill tool: demfill01
2) run the Flow Direction tool with input file as the demfill01. The output file is flowdir01.

Thanks
Yoshi

[YoshiTsuzuki]

This is a solution report. I go around this problem by preparing a raster file (tif) as reported at http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/53555-Build-raster-attribute-table?p=334190. Then, BuildRasterAttributeTable has worked.

Thanks all for your advices.
Yoshi