limitations in display XY data

[richardwong1]

Hi I am still fairly new to GIS.  I am trying to plot XY coordinates but having issues.  The data file I have is 71,047 lines with long/lat coordinates.  When I try to plot the entire thing it doesnt work, however, if I cut down the number of lines to about 100 it displays properly. Are there limits to how many points the "display XY coordinates" can manage? or is there another solution in making them plot.  

Also to note, when i run the entire 71,047 lines its not that it doesnt work per se... as I was testing as I am able to run the process of display XY coordinates, and export data into a shp file, but in the shp file attributes table it shows data, but it doesnt display.  I am able to zoom to specific points and also make them flash very briefly, but when I look on the map there's nothing there.

I'm not sure if this is limitations in: 

1) how much data can be plotted?

2) my video card which is ATI AMD Radeon HD 7800 series (yes, its old)

Thanks!

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Have you check for blank rows or missing coordinate entries

Make sure the Longitude (X) and latitude (Y) are not reversed and are in decimal degrees and not DMS or some other variant

Make sure that -ve signs are used for longitude coordinates west of the prime and latitude values south of the equator.

Make XY Event Layer—Data Management toolbox | ArcGIS Desktop  and make sure you define the coordinate system... it says optional, but it is only optional if you want problems later on, like getting it to behave with other data.

[richardwong1]

Thanks guys for the input.  

After looking through the the spreadsheet I found the errors as some of the values were outside of the ranges for longtitude and latitude, must have been a key in error.