How do I update a shapefile with new data from an excel file?

[ElizabethDever1]

I am doing a project using well data. I have a master file that I am to update with production data. I know that I can use joins/relates to do this however, I am having some issues. 

• My base layer (the one I am trying to update) has 19426 wells in the layer. 
• My matching file (the one I am trying to use to update the base file) has 4012 wells in the layer. 
• When I do the join, it verifies the join with no errors, however it is saying that I have 6985 matching objects in the files after the join. How can this be possible if there are only 4012 objects to be had?

Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated!

[ElizabethDever1]

Update: I do notice that some of the wells in my base layer have both surface hole location and bottom hole location. This is causing each well that does have that data recorded to have not one but two ID's. Is there a way to filter through and remove the bottom hole location data sets just for the purpose of joining the production data without deleting it from the dataset completely?

[RebeccaStrauch__GISP]

Have you tried reselecting to filter out the bottom holes before the join.

Question, is the data structure the same for the two files?  If they are, can you just recreated/export to a new shapefile?  If you need those bottom holes added back, you could alwas put those to a temp file and then append them back on.  If not, and you only need the 19k points, but need to keep them in sync, maybe think about setting up a one-way replication.

Replication types—ArcGIS Help | ArcGIS for Desktop 

Just trying to give some alternatives that might be easier...of course depending on what you need as the finale.