Date field affected by Merge

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06-14-2013 07:24 AM
StephenGonzales
New Contributor
I am running 10.0, SP5 and attempting to merge 12 point shapefiles. Each file contains AIS data for one month of the year. The merge completes successfully but the dates in my date field become corrupt. The date for most records will become modified and either be blank, change to "12:00 am" or become some other date, e.g. 12/21/7200. When I merge 2 or 3 together no change occurs. But, if I add a fourth or more, the dates modify. Any idea why?
The number of points in each file ranges from approx. 886,000 to approx. 1,290,000.

Thanks.
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DarrenWiens2
MVP Honored Contributor
Have you tried saving the output as a geodatabase feature class? Feature classes and shapefiles handle dates differently.

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4 Replies
LeeHightower
New Contributor
do the date fields of different tables have the same format?
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StephenGonzales
New Contributor
Yes. And the merge will work without date modification for any combination of 3 months. But when I try to merge more than 3, the errors occur.
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DarrenWiens2
MVP Honored Contributor
Have you tried saving the output as a geodatabase feature class? Feature classes and shapefiles handle dates differently.
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StephenGonzales
New Contributor
That appears to have done the trick. The merge was faster, too.
Thanks for the help.
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