Hi Joe,
Thanks for your suggestion. After trying to convert from CSV to GDB and XLSX to GDB, and then applying the XY to Line tool, I still got the same error (000072), although slightly different. Instead of "Cannot process feature with OID -1" I got the error "Cannot process feature with OID 1," "Cannot process feature with OID 2," and so on.
This project is essentially me pulling historical movement data of people out of oral histories, so I have the freedom to choose how I input data, whether CSV, XLS, or otherwise, and I chose CSV since I figured it would be fairly hassle free. GeoJSON posed no issues importing to feature, but I wanted to cut out the GeoJSON coding step.
Do you have any suggestions for a more succinct input method?
Thanks for your help.