Joining Two Attribute Tables: Which field to use? Or combine data differently?

[Sally_AnnSims]

Hello,

I need to join the data in two attribute tables. The tables contain data on 500 random points (1,000 total) in "habitat" and "habitat" (one table for habitat, one table for nonhabitat) and corresponding fields that include lat long coordinates and elevation data.  I need to end up with a joint dbf file that I can covert to a csv file and analyze in R software for logistic regression.

I'm not sure what Field to join the tables with.  Since they are two different geographic areas they have no Field in common and the Rowid columns are the same (each table has 1 to 500 records).  In other worlds, I need a table that has 1,000 rows--there will be no matching records in the join.  I tried joining on the habitat/nonhabitat designation field and got null values.

So I really need to add the tables together into one file.  Can I do this with the Join function, another function, or should I combine the tables in the csv format?  Or perhaps I need to create the random points somehow in one file with two constraining features:  The polygon masks of habitat and nonhabitat.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Sally

[JoshuaCrough]

To make one file from 2 you can use the Append tool in ArcToolBox (Data Management -> General -> Append) and it will just add the records in one table after the last records in the other table.

Hope that is what you were looking for.

Joshua

[Sally_AnnSims]

Hi Joshua,

Thanks for the tip.  It tried Append, but I kept getting error messages.  So I used Merge then exported to Excel to do some editing to the columns.

Thanks again,
Sally