Problem with Join Field tool

[AveryBowron]

I've been using the Join Field tool to add two fields from a .dbf table that describe ownership groups (i.e. Weyerhaueser, etc) and group types (i.e. public, private, conservation, etc) to county-wide tax parcel features that are part of a personal geodatabase.  This worked fine for six counties, but for some reason I can't get the final county I'm working with to join properly.  The tool runs without any error messages, but the resulting table has NULL values in most (but not all) of its records.  This is partially expected (as the join table doesn't have a matching record for every record of the input table), but there are many records which should have joined, but did not, and ended up with a NULL value.  Neither the input nor the join tables had any records selected when I performed the join.

Any ideas on what could have caused this?

Thanks,
Avery Bowron

ArcGIS 10 ArcINFO student license
Windows 7

[GrahamMacGregor]

I am running into the same join field issue in python that says above would be fixed in service pack 5. I am running service pack 5. Joinfield runs but only joins some of the rows while leaving the others null. Spaces in my join field "No". Finally resorted in python to using adjoin tool, with no qualified field names and then copied that join to a new feature class in python.

[RL]

http://support.esri.com/en/bugs/nimbus/TklNMDc2MTg2

using JoinField tool from the toolbox or model builder, it is still returning NULL values for some part of the data unexpectedly.
I am running ArcGIS 10.0 sp5.  It is very disappointing that it is Not fixed in sp5!

[Ralf-D_Schroers]

Any solution to this?? I'm using modelbuilder and ArcGIS 10 (ArcInfo), SP5.

-Ralf

[NickJones]

Has anybody ever figured this out?  It's pretty rampant.  I try to use this tool a lot.  I have the same service pack as Ralf right above me.  I find that I never have this issue with a numeric field, but now I'm kind of wondering if "alpha-numeric" values throw it off for some reason.  I know it's not unknown spaces or anything like that, because the join works just fine the old fashioned way.

Thanks,

Nick

[NickJones]

Still nothing?  Since I last replied to this thread in February, I've found that using number values as opposed to alpha numeric or and kind of string works much better.  It's sort of a hassle though.  So I create a table in the beginning that has the string values and a new number value.  I use this table to do a regular join later on, but any time I use "join field" I use the number values instead.  I wish they 'd fix this or respond.  It's gotten me in hot water a few times.

Nick

[Anonymous User]

Just bumped into this tonight. Working with SSURGO data, the primary key is a numeric value, though stored in the field as a string... No idea why... With the exact same table, I was able to use Join Field to permanently append the fields from another table. Went to do it a second time. All settings the same... Failed every time I tried. I had the full target table selected, I was doing it manually directly through toolbox, and I was nowhere near the ~255 column cap... Tried it with only one field, still not working. Was able to use Join function through right-click menu just fine. Only error generated was 999999 generic error code. No other messages, or indication in logs of what might have produced this failure. Saw a few other posts addressing this issue for slightly different reasons. Wanted to tag onto this post to let people know it may still be an ongoing issue? No clear indication here if it was ever resolved... 

[curtvprice]

Nothing above in this thread about 999999 crashes, just matches not working.

999999 crashes often are related to system related issues, often invalid path names, table names, and field names.

[Anonymous User]

Ah yes. Thank you! I'm conflating forum posts after surfing a bunch related to same thing. The tables, filepath, field names all check out. Haven't changed anything from raw SSURGO tables, no hidden spaces, and the table that successfully joined using join field tool is in exact same location/gDB/filepath as the table that would not join successfully to the target table... Standard Join tool works from right click menu. Join Field tool through toolbox does not... I can't think of anything else that points to anything other than the tool itself? Though I am new. Any ideas if it's not the filepath/fieldnames etc?

I also did have a glitch earlier in the same process where I had to start again with raw data because the Join Field tool resulted in large amounts of blank (not Null but truly blank) cells that I knew should have data in them post-Join. At the time, I assumed it was me, but after ongoing issues and seeing this thread, I'm starting to think it may be more than just user-error... Thanks in advance for any possible help!

[curtvprice]

If you really are seeing crashes, i would contact Esri support. Though you are likely to find out it is a data specific issue. I have not non-data specific issues with Join Field except of course its legendary slowness.

SSURGO data retrievals can be very complicated, if you are using the soils records you can have a double one to many relationship between the map unit table, soil records, and layer records. Here are some pre-digested datasets that may save you some pain:

SSURGO Data Downloader (beta)

Area- and Depth-Weighted Averages of Selected SSURGO Variables for the Conterminous United States an... 

[ArmandGerstenberger]

How bad is this software that it can't join two databases together? How bad is this company that 8 years go by with no fix?