Spatial join to fill in ONLY blank records?

[JesseSmith3]

I have two layers. One is missing several records in one field (say, "field_1"), and the other has the data that is missing from the first layer in its own identically named field ("field_1").

Is there a way that I can take specifically just the cases from layer two that are missing from layer one and fill them in in layer one's pre-existing field_1?

I realize it would be easy to just do the spatial join and have a new second column that contains the missing records, but that seems unnecessarily cumbersome.

[JoeyDaniel]

Query to the relative data in both tables, export table two to excel, copy records (column) from excel, start an edit session on table one, right click the first record of your field and paste. As long as the records match exactly and are in the correct order you shouldn't have any issues.