Latest Contributions by RichardCourtney

Another try. This time I was in ArcMap and opened Catalog. I added a new shapefile and used Catalog to add fields. I added two correctly, and then entered a field that was too long. ArcCatalog successfully truncated and added the field name. After that, I could not add more fields. I get the same error I first reported. I do not find my ArcCatalog work showing up in Geoprocessing results rSc Richard S. Courtney Ph.D. | Chairman, Department of Geography Kutztown University of Pennsylvania 105 Graduate Center | PO Box 730 | Kutztown, PA 19530 Phone: 610-683-4364 | Fax: 610-683-4941 faculty.kutztown.edu/courtney<http://faculty.kutztown.edu/courtney> ... View more

Rebecca, I have found out a bit more. All along I have been working in a properly named folder, not a geodatabase. I have successfully added several fields to a new file being careful to make no mistakes. If, however, I try to add a field that has too many characters, ArcCatalog will offer to truncate the name, but it will not be able to add the corrected field. At that point, no other fields are accepted. ArcCatalog seems not to forgive mistakes, and students will make plenty of mistakes. I wish to avoid running scripts for this process. I want students to be able to create new files when needed using ArcCatalog. This way they should have control over location, type, projection, and fields. Try making a mistake and see what happens for you, I’d be interested to know. Thanks. R. Courtney Richard S. Courtney Ph.D. | Chairman, Department of Geography Kutztown University of Pennsylvania 105 Graduate Center | PO Box 730 | Kutztown, PA 19530 Phone: 610-683-4364 | Fax: 610-683-4941 faculty.kutztown.edu/courtney<http://faculty.kutztown.edu/courtney> ... View more

Rebecca, Thanks for getting back to me. I am in ArcCatalog 10.5.1 where I create a new shapefile (with projection) and I go to add fields to the attribute table. I can get the first field in every time. When I go to add the second field, regardless of the field name length 5 characters for State, for instance ArcCatalog gives me the following error message. I don’t recall having this difficulty prior to 10.5. I have seen ArcCatalog warn me about field name lengths, but it would offer a truncated version. None of the names have been duplicates, so I don’t see that as the issue. I wish this worked like used to as I have students do this in my cartography course. It doesn’t go well in a classroom setting when steps don’t work like they are supposed to. Any ideas? R. Courtney Richard S. Courtney Ph.D. | Chairman, Department of Geography Kutztown University of Pennsylvania 105 Graduate Center | PO Box 730 | Kutztown, PA 19530 Phone: 610-683-4364 | Fax: 610-683-4941 faculty.kutztown.edu/courtney<http://faculty.kutztown.edu/courtney> ... View more

I will occasionally experience this problem too.  I find that once this happens the geodatabase will no longer accept exported features.  Saving outside the GDB works, but we want accurate feature geometry, so we want the exported features in the GDB.  I find that I can use the Import step to grab the exported shapefile and import it to the reluctant GDB.  It is an additional step, but I am able to maintain a single GDB and also accurate feature geometry. I'd like for this not to happen, but I am at a loss as to why this occurs.  A usual sign of impending failure is that I select the features, go to Data/Export and Arc shows the path to the GDB, but offers me a shapefile extension.  That means the GDB has become closed to exported features. ... View more