Issues with Delete Identical Tool?

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04-02-2014 07:55 AM
JonathanNewell
New Contributor II
Hello!

I have been having an issue that hopefully someone might have some insight on...


I had some doubts on whether the tool was working properly for me so I did a little experiment by taking a shapefile and making an identical copy of it...merged the two together and then ran the Delete Identical tool, expecting the results to be cut in half since there should be 2 of every feature of the shapefile, only for it to delete just a few features.

Is this how the tool is supposed to work and I am just mistaken in my expectations?


Here is a detailed version of what I am trying to do:

I have downloaded multiple regions of data from the NHD, merged those together to obtain flowlines for the entire state of Illinois and then clipped the flowlines with a state polygon. The issue I have is the 3 major rivers bordering the state are not complete since the flowlines exceed the boundary of the state. So what I did was select the 3 major rivers and made that into its own shapefile and then merged that with the clipped flowline shapefile. After that was completed I ran the Delete Identical tool and that is where I began to question the results of the process.

Edited to add: I am running ArcGIS 10.0

I'm hoping someone may have some insight or experience in dealing with this type of issue.

Thank you for reading and any help!

Jonathan Newell
Academic Hourly
Illinois State Water Survey
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StevenGraf1
Occasional Contributor III
I'm not familiar with the data you are using but if you are using multiple regions of data, then I suspect the features aren't exact duplicates.  What fields were you using when trying to delete identical features and were the values in those fields exactly the same?
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