I have one shapefile that will not import into a personal database properly.

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07-16-2017 08:59 AM
FLTCMapping
New Contributor II

I have imported 100s of other individual shapefiles into many other personal database files, but I have one shapefile that will not import properly. ArcMap will import the file, but it does not appear the same. This is a fairly large shapefile (114 MB) and the mdb file is nearly 2GB.

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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

size limits probably, you should be using file geodatabases if possible

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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

size limits probably, you should be using file geodatabases if possible

XanderBakker
Esri Esteemed Contributor

Absolutely a size problem as Dan Patterson  mentions:

Because they are stored in Access databases, personal geodatabases have a maximum size of 2 GB

Source: What is a personal geodatabase?—Help | ArcGIS Desktop 

You should really consider moving away from Personal Geodatabases. Even if you are still not touching the limits, performance is really bad when a PGDB gets more than ½ -1 GB:

The effective limit before performance degrades is typically between 250 and 500 MB per Access database file.

Source: Types of geodatabases—ArcGIS Help | ArcGIS Desktop 

curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor

.mdb files also do not delete records from tables (this is for performance reasons) when you delete or change records, rows are just marked as deleted. You can remove these ghost records (and sometimes dramatically improve the performance of an .mdb) by running a Compact on the database.

Compact file and personal geodatabases—Help | ArcGIS Desktop 

JayantaPoddar
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Try using a File GDB to overcome the size limitation, unless you have got only ArcGIS Desktop Basic license.



Think Location
FLTCMapping
New Contributor II

I want to thank you all very much. I crated a file geodatabase as you suggested and it worked perfectly! Much gratitude.  Greg

XanderBakker
Esri Esteemed Contributor

Please mark the post by Dan Patterson as the correct answer. 

FLTCMapping
New Contributor II

Having imported the shapefile into a file geodatabase, I find that 69 out of 370,051 attribute table records did NOT import with the rest. I am stymied as to why this happened, without any error or notification.  Help???  Thank you all.

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XanderBakker
Esri Esteemed Contributor

It is strange that there is not error message when not all the records are imported. Could you run a Check Geometry—Help | ArcGIS Desktop on the shapefile to see if there are any records that have error which may have prevented them from being imported? Since you have a large input file, it could take some time to run. 

FLTCMapping
New Contributor II

I ran it, and have a table showing a null geometry error on 5 entries.

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