Can I find duplicates in a number (~30) of point shapefiles?

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05-27-2015 09:01 AM
Cathina_Gunn_de_Rosas
New Contributor II

I have a bunch of xy shapefiles (31 in one project and 37 in another). They are all "parts" of a single xy shapefile that I have separated into chunks regionally.

For example in one project, the original file has 1799 points in it and the 37 segments have parts of that (and a few are actually thrown out, so the sum would be 20-30 less than 1799). I need to know if I've accidentally counted one point in more than one region (and there are too many to trust eyeballing it).

I could export it all to Excel and look for duplicates but that will take a long time and seems onorous. Is there a quicker way to look at them all together and see if there is duplicates? For instance, if I threw them back into a "merge" can I quickly ask it to show me duplicate values?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

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2 Replies
ToddBlanchette
Occasional Contributor II

Hi Cathina,

You can do a quick merge and use the "Find Identical (Data Management)" tool to search for identical geometries (within set tolerance) by pointing it at the [shape] fields.  There is also a "Delete Identical" tool.

More info:

ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)

Cheers,

Todd

ToddBlanchette
Occasional Contributor II

On further reading, you could also try out the Feature Compare tool, which will run a comparison between 2 feature classes or layers found here.

You have the option to set what it compares (such as geometry, schema, attributes, etc), but you're obviously looking at the geometry option.  This tool is probably quicker and less 'dirty' than merging your data to run as above.

Todd