Pivot Table creates blanks instead of NULLs

[deleted-user-qpvAI3Fo0MKR]

When running the Pivot Table tool, I end up with blanks (" ") instead of NULLs.

I'm curious if this is the expected behavior of the tool, or if I'm missing some setting somewhere.

This is a problem because the next step in this workflow is to calculate Summary Statistics (Count) of values in each of these fields, and Count treats blanks as valid values.

I realize I can loop through all the fields and change the blanks to NULLs and will do this as a last resort.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted solution]

Interesting according to

Pivot Table—Data Management toolbox | ArcGIS Desktop 

You might be running to the text beginning with  a number issue or some variant

If the Pivot Field is a text field, its values must begin with a character (for example, a2) and not a number (for example, 2a). If the value of the first record begins with a number, all the output values will be 0.

but at least you don't have nulls in the source since the tool would fail

The tool fails if the selected Pivot Field contains Null values.

[deleted-user-qpvAI3Fo0MKR]

Thanks Dan - 

these are indeed integers stored as text. Thanks for reading the documentation for me

[DanPatterson_Retired]

No problem Josh... someone has to