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arcgisarcmap
Nigel Stackhouse
Nigel Stackhouse

Reputation: 492

Importing large table into ArcMAP

I have a table with >2,000,000 rows containing the latitude and longitude (decimal degrees) of many bird count observations. The columns are are listed as "strings", even though many contain only numbers, and I'm unable to create a new field to convert the "strings" to "integers" since I cannot edit the table (no editable layers, ArcMAP tells me).

The file is too big to manipulate in Excel, so I cannot change things there either. Does anyone know of a way to read such a large table into ArcMAP in a way that allows for editing so I can convert "string" fields to other forms?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 168

Answers (1)

csterling
csterling

Reputation: 714

A column will be cast as 'string' type if any value is a text character. You could try to select only the records with integer values, and populate a new field with those. Or you could remove all records that are not integer values, creating a sort of refined table.

You're going to have to edit your column first in order to convert the other values to intger values. You can't convert a value such as '123 main street' to integer, it just doesn't work like that.

I'd suggest using python to loop through the table. Or use some methods in the Select by Attribute window.

Upvotes: 2

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