Project for a class

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09-30-2015 11:04 AM
ChaseBergklint
New Contributor II

Hi, I am in a class that uses ARC GIS 10.2.2. Until now, my professor has always given us the data that we needed for projects. However, I have my own data in an Excel and I want to put it in ARC GIS. I have no idea how to create an attribute table, or if it would be easier to include the Microsoft Excel document.

Can someone tell me how to do either or both of those?

Thanks,

Chase

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15 Replies
ChaseBergklint
New Contributor II
STATE_CODEALUMNI_NUMBER
AK198
AL903
AR290
AZ821
CA2578
CO862
CT326
DC200
DE167
FL5557
GA2686
HI139
IA196
ID155
IL1892
IN9033
KS343
KY94213
LA359
MA546
MD1024
ME115
MI900
MN474
MO1006
MS329
MT106
NC2401
ND33
NE103
NH125
NJ642
NM239
NV299
NY1134
OH3422
OK262
OR391
PA1034
RI91
SC1202
SD33
TN2522
TX2832
UT308
VA2060
VT59
WA712
WI547
WV265
WY

58

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ChrisSmith7
Frequent Contributor

Chase,

Try this:

1) Save in notepad, e.g. myfile.txt:

2) Open Excel

3) Open file

4) Choose "all files (*.*)" in drop-down

5) Navigate to directory containing your .txt

6) Choose "Delimited" in the import wizard

7) Check "My data has header"

😎 Start import at row 1

9) Next

10) Choose "Tab" as delimiter

11) You can leave the text qualifier as "

12) Next

13) Click on the STATE_CODE column

14) Choose "Text" as format

15) Click on the ALUMNI_NUMBER column

16) Looks like you can leave as "General" for the format type

17) Finish

18) Verify Excel output

19) Save as .xlsx if you have Excel 2007+ installed on your GIS box, otherwise, save as .xls

20) Open ArcMap

21) Add data

22) Double click on your .xls

23) Select the worksheet

24) Add

25) Right click and confirm the attribute table

26) Download state shapefile - ftp://ftp2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2015/STATE/tl_2015_us_state.zip

27) Unzip

28) Add data in ArcMap

29) Navigate to the State shapefile - "tl_2015_us_state.shp"

30) Verify rendering in ArcMap

31) Right-click "tl_2015_us_state"

32) Joins and Relates

33) Join

34) Join attributes from a table

35) 1 - STUSPS

36) 2 - myfile$

37) STATE_CODE

38) Keep all records

39) Validate join

40) Close

41) OK

42) Right-click "tl_2015_us_state"

43) Open attribute table

44) Scroll over to the last two columns

45) Confirm Join

46) Close table

47) Right-click "tl_2015_us_state"

48) Properties

49) Symbology tab

50) Quantities

51) Graduated colors

52) Value - ALUMNI_NUMBER

53) OK

54) Review choropleth

ChrisSmith7
Frequent Contributor

Also, here's some info on working with layout view:

Displaying maps in data view and layout view—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

And printing the map:

About map printing—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop

Here's information on symbolizing based on quantity:

About symbolizing layers to represent quantity—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop 

I would also recommend adding a map legend, scalebar, north arrow, etc.

ChrisSmith7
Frequent Contributor

Merrrr, I hope I just didn't do a whole homework assignment for you... You'd better make this a good research paper! Make sure you understand exactly what just happened... I think the biggest stumbling block is just getting the data into ArcMap - the rest of this stuff you probably already knew.

StevenGraf1
Occasional Contributor III

I've seen this happen with CSV files.  Open it in Excel and save it as a workbook.  Add the sheet from the workbook to ArcMap.  It should display properly in the attribute table.

Are you using a Mac?

-Steven.

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StevenGraf1
Occasional Contributor III

Here's your basic workflow.

Download states layer here:

ftp://ftp2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2015/STATE/

Bring it into ArcMap

Bring in your excel document with the Alumni numbers and State fields.

Join the excel document to the states layer based on state name.  These fields must match exactly.

You will have your information geographically displayed on the map with your alumni numbers associated with them.

You can now symbolize the states based on the number of alumni per state.

-Steven