Select By location Help- should be easy

[tyleravis]

Hello,
I'm attempting to do a simple select by location and am missing a step somewhere in the process.

I have created two shapefiles that are both buffers. What i am trying to do is select the area that is within an area, but is outside of the other buffer zone. T

o make it simple, I have created a layer that would be a 4 mile buffer around the center of a city, and then have created a layer of homes within that 4 mile area that also have a 1250 foot buffer. I'd like to select the area that is outside of the 1250 buffer, but still within the 4 mile buffer. in the photo i would like to select the purple area but not include the green areas.[ATTACH=CONFIG]25789[/ATTACH]

[JakubSisak]

None of the green areas are outside the pink circle. Outside mean completaly outside, within is completatly within. I think what you are asking is to select only those green features that intersect the pink circle but are not coimpletaly within?  I could use the "touch the boundary of the source layer feature" spatial selection method but my preffered method is are completely within the source layer feature" then switch selection.

Make sure the "green" features are individual features, not multigeometry. If so - explode them first.

[tyleravis]

None of the green areas are outside the pink circle. Outside mean completaly outside, within is completatly within. I think what you are asking is to select only those green features that intersect the pink circle but are not coimpletaly within?  I could use the "touch the boundary of the source layer feature" spatial selection method but my preffered method is are completely within the source layer feature" then switch selection.

Make sure the "green" features are individual features, not multigeometry. If so - explode them first.

yes sorry, attempting to select the pink areas outside of the green areas. when i'm attempting to do so it selects nothing.
very frustrating.
What I'm specifically trying to do is to create a layer that shows the area within that 4 mile buffer
(which would be the pink), but the layer excludes all of the green circles. I've been going through all of the combinations of things to do with the selection method and also switching up the target and source layers, but it seems like arcgis doesnt want to perform the function for some reason, and I cant seem to find a reason as to why it wouldn't work. I've tried it with both a dissolved layer, which is shown in that image, as well as with all of the individual buffer circles.

[tyleravis]

Thanks for the input,

All it took was a few different ways of wording  a search in the search bar.

I found my answer herehttp://forums.arcgis.com/threads/68573-How-to-do-a-type-of-reverse-buffer

here is an image of what my output looked like.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]25796[/ATTACH]

[MarkBoucher]

I would have tried Union. However, reverse-buffer seems more direct.