There was an error trying to process this table.

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07-18-2013 10:31 AM
JustinTomei
New Contributor II
I have a dataset of about 32000 addresses I have been trying to geocode. Time after time I keep getting the same error message, the one in the title of this thread. I have changed names of columns, tried making it a dbf, tried removing everything but the address information, splitting the data in half to make it smaller. Regardless of what I do i get anywhere from 1%-5% done and I get the error.

Any ideas?

Thanks.
Tags (2)
44 Replies
BryanSheasby
New Contributor
1) I cannot post the data as there are several federal and state laws that prevent me from doing so

2) I work at a Fortune 500 corporation that is looking at licensing other ESRI products. This problem exists from 2003 and I can link to the threads to prove it. It is a problem with the application and its error handling and its been going on for a decade.

This error message is useless and should never be displayed... period. Release a patch and fix the problem.
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JoeBorgione
MVP Emeritus
You don't have to prove anything to me; I just offered a suggestion or two...
That should just about do it....
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BryanSheasby
New Contributor
This is not a data issue. I have a new process when Geocoding now where I run my batch until it fails and then do a vlookup of the results in excel and re-run the records that did not return results. I never take records out. I just keep running the same file over and over again minus whatever records returned results already.

Eventually it will finish all the records.
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AndrewCampbell3
New Contributor
jborgion, I am having the same problem.  What can I do to clean up my data? I have already removed leading and trailing spaces by using Excel's TRIM function. My data has hyphens and pound signs and who knows what else in the address field. Is there a canonical list of characters to be avoided?

I am thinking about writing a Python script to pull out addresses with special characters, but I don't know what ones are critical. Is there a better way to do it?

Thanks,
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BryanSheasby
New Contributor
The way I see it, if you can create a feature class out of the data then you should be able to Geocode it. Do you get the error right away or after it has processed many of the records?

I've given up on fixing this and just re-process my data over again minus the results. Its slow but it works.

On a completely unrelated note, I reject all results that do not match rooftop on at least a 90% confidence level.
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JoeBorgione
MVP Emeritus
jborgion, I am having the same problem.  What can I do to clean up my data? I have already removed leading and trailing spaces by using Excel's TRIM function. My data has hyphens and pound signs and who knows what else in the address field. Is there a canonical list of characters to be avoided?

I am thinking about writing a Python script to pull out addresses with special characters, but I don't know what ones are critical. Is there a better way to do it?

Thanks,


Typically a space at the end and trailing space aren't game changers.  Personally, I don't like any special characters in any addresses that I process.  You might write some kind of [split] function on those addresses with hypens and pound signs: that way you can preserve the original data, and extract the true address out of the list/array like

1234 S Main St #5B  becomes 1234 S Main St

4321 S Main St - Apt1  becomes 4321 S Main St

or whatever...
That should just about do it....
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TheodoreJohnson
New Contributor
I was receiving this error. I removed null addresses from the table I was attemping to geocode and it worked then.

TJ
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JeffPatinio
New Contributor
Hi,

been having trouble with certain tables that im geocoding, someone said that "special characters" must be the reason why while im in the middle of geocoding, arccatalog suddenly closes and an error window appears and not all of my records are geocoded. does someone here have a list of what characters should not be part of the address? or any other reasons why im having this issue with geocoding...

Thanks!
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JoeBorgione
MVP Emeritus
Hi,

been having trouble with certain tables that im geocoding, someone said that "special characters" must be the reason why while im in the middle of geocoding, arccatalog suddenly closes and an error window appears and not all of my records are geocoded. does someone here have a list of what characters should not be part of the address? or any other reasons why im having this issue with geocoding...

Thanks!


There's a 'list' of special characters on the top row of keys on your key board.  Just do a find and replace on any or all of the characters. 

When it bails out for you, do you get an idea of where it's bailing?  Does it say something like 121 out of 500 records geocoded?  If so, I'd look at record 122 first.....

You might want to look for <null> values in your address field:  address is null in the query builder.  Those are also pretty easy to find by sorting on the address field both ascending and then descending.  Look at the top few rows.  Sometimes your other problem children will show up that way as well.
That should just about do it....
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StevenGraf1
Occasional Contributor III
I was having this same error and got it resolved.  I found a blank record separating my data which I removed.  I also had some forumlas in my first sheet which I just copied the data and pasted 'values' to get rid of the formulas.  I was then able to geocode my addresses.  The strange thing is, on my second page I had formulas combining address fields and it let me geocode them.

Anyways, I hope this helps someone out.
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