Shapefiles not lining up

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03-13-2012 04:31 AM
SharonWalsh
New Contributor
I am having some trouble lining up my shapefiles - I have one point shapefile and one polygon shapefile. The polygon file is adapted from the ESRI Data and Maps 10 NUTS 2 shapefile - I broke this down to only include Denmark, Finland and Sweden. I used the North Pole Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area projection for this shapefile. I also had an excel file of climate data for Denmark (which contained longitude and latitude fields) so I added this into Arc - I exported the data and saved it as a shapefile. I then deleted the .prj file and used the define projection tool to set the projection to the same as that of the polygon file. However, the two shapefiles are not lining up.

I have read previous posts on the same issue and have attempted some of the suggestions but so far I have not been able to figure it out! I am new to GIS so perhaps I am missing something very simple. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sharon
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3 Replies
PatrickTaurman
Occasional Contributor III
Hi Sharon,

So your polygon file is in the North Pole Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area projection, and the points you added are in decimal degrees, is that correct?  If so, you will need to add the XY data into ArcMap using the correct Geographic Coordinate system (WGS 1984 or whatever it is in), export this out to a shapefile, and then use the Project tool to change the projection. 

What you did is take data with the correct extents and coordinate system, and then deleted the correct coordinate system and changed it to something else while leaving the extents unchanged.  If you want to get data from one coordinate system to another you will always need to use the Project (or Project Raster if you are dealing with rasters) tool.

Patrick
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SharonWalsh
New Contributor
Hi Patrick,

Thank you very much for your reply! I just did that and it worked perfectly! I had tried the project tool previously but I think the mistake that I was making was when I was adding the XY data I was not specifying a geographic coordinate system.

Thank you again for your help.

Kind regards,
Sharon
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punithapunitha
New Contributor
i have a shape file for karnataka, india, try to overlay on

googlemaps, through asp.net , but my shape file falling on the indian

sea, not alighning with india on gmaps.

I changed the .prj file to wgs84:
The following is the .prj file:
GEOGCS["GCS_WGS_1984",DATUM["D_WGS_1984",
SPHEROID["WGS_1984",6378137,298.257223563]],PRIMEM

["Greenwich",0],UNIT["Degree",0.0174532925199433]]

but couldnot succeed.. Any help would be greatly appreciated ...
thanks,
punitha
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