“Display XY Data” the X and Y field do not have any options in the drop down menu.

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09-13-2017 09:01 AM
laxmiparajuli
New Contributor II

I am very new to GIS. When I import the excel document and hit “Display XY Data” the X and Y field do not have any options in the drop down menu. Do you know why this is the case? I have been trying to figure this out for hours now and believe it is a simple error on my part. Any assistance you provide would be greatly appreciated.

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DarrenWiens2
MVP Honored Contributor

If you look at the field properties for latitude or longitude, you'll see that they are string type. They are guaranteed to be string because there are non-numerical characters in the field (quotes). Remove the quotes and the fields may be interpreted as number when you reload.

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DarrenWiens2
MVP Honored Contributor

The drop down lists only show number data type fields. Make sure your coordinates are in a number data type field - even though they might be numbers, they may be in string fields.

laxmiparajuli
New Contributor II

This might be a stupid question but where can I check the coordinate data type? Thank you for your help.

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AdrianWelsh
MVP Honored Contributor

Iaxmi,

In addition to what Darren said, I often like to save my Excel spreadsheet as a CSV file then use the CSV in GIS. This way I can open my CSV file separately in Excel to see if there are any obvious errors before bringing it into GIS. If you're still having issues, please post a screenshot of what you're seeing.

laxmiparajuli
New Contributor II

Thanks  you. This is what it looks like.

This is what it loos like. I have tried everything I could but nth seems to work. Your help is very appreciated.t

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DarrenWiens2
MVP Honored Contributor

If you look at the field properties for latitude or longitude, you'll see that they are string type. They are guaranteed to be string because there are non-numerical characters in the field (quotes). Remove the quotes and the fields may be interpreted as number when you reload.

laxmiparajuli
New Contributor II

Like you said it has string type and I do not see any place where I can edit it !! Can you help me with that too. I am very New to this thing so I have no knowledge about anything. Thank you for your patience.

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AdrianWelsh
MVP Honored Contributor

The editing has to happen on the spreadsheet end. Make sure all numeric values are numeric.

One of your values for longitude is this:

"-122.82829"

It should read this:

-122.82829

As you can see there are no quotes on it. This makes the value on that record numeric. When it has quotes or any other special characters, it is a string (or text) type of value.

Does that make sense? Basically, edit your spreadsheet first, then bring it into GIS again.

laxmiparajuli
New Contributor II

Ok. I will do that and see. Thank you very much !!

Sent from my iPhone

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JayantaPoddar
MVP Esteemed Contributor

The Lat/Lon fields in your excel sheet will need a lot of cleaning.

Apart from the quotes, you also need to remove rows containing other string values (e.g. Parking Lot and other Text values) or you can replace the text with the numeric Lat./Lon. values, if you know them.

For deleting the quotes MS Excel, select all the cells of Lat./Lon. columns. Then execute a Find and Replace (Ctrl + F). Replace " with blank (Don't put any space). Click Replace All.

Also replace other texts in Lat./Lon. columns with their respective numeric Lat./Lon. values.



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