Unable to plot 74k points

[brianmcgee]

Doing some research here and I have a file that has 74k points.  Even on a blank map I am unable to plot all 74k of them, but if I cut them down to less than 10k it will populate just fine. I'm not sure why this is happening as I have been able to plot more than 10k before.

Steps I am taking:

1. Add Data

2. Choose XLXS (excel) file containing 74k lat long entry points

3. choose sheet 1, where all the data is located.

4. ToC loads sheet and I right click and Display XY data

5. Field X= Longitude Y=Latitude

6. map will populate if under 10k but with 74k nothing populates, but sometimes will get some locations off the west coast of Africa.

Any assistance is helpful.  I wanted to also try to do a Spatial Density Plot on those points once they are plotted

[IanMurray]

Hi Brian

I had no problem plotting all your points, I selected all the cells in excel prior to bringing it into ArcMap and made sure they were formatted to number, with 6 decimal places, and all 74622 displayed following the steps your followed.  It took a while for all the points to be created though.

Here is a copy of the shapefile.

[brianmcgee]

Hmm.. Maybe its my computer being just too slow...  For map coordinates did you choose WGA 1984?  How long did it take your computer to process the points btw?

Brian

[IanMurray]

My computer is about 5 years old, and it took about 3-4 minutes.  I left coordinate system as unknown since it was raw lat/long.  If it was in a coordinate system, you can use define projection to give it a projection.