Really need your help please!!Matching rainfall data with 13,000 lat/long points

[JuliaLaw]

I have rainfall data for many lat/long points in Australia.
1. I feel really dense but dont know what shapefile of Australia I should get, or is anyone alright, because they will have the lat/long points?
2. What would be a common field I could join the rainfall data table to on a shapefile of Australia?
3. I am only getting a small number of matches because the lat/long points are so specific...can I do a 'rough match' kind of function?
This is driving me nuts, any help appreciated..my boss is breathing down my neck!

[BenHolmes]

Hi Julia

Maybe you just need to use Spatial Join (Find it in ArcToolbox under Analysis Tools/Overlay)

Are you trying to assign some admin area to the rainfall data? If it's polygon based then Spatial Join is what you want.

If not, please give some more info of what you are trying to join the rainfall points to or what you(or your boss) want(s) at the end of the analysis.

Ben

[JuliaLaw]

Thanks for your reply Ben..later in the afternoon, ESRI tech help called me and showed me..you guessed it-Spatial Joins! So you were absolutely correct. Its good to have a resource like this, and also ESRI help, when one is sitting alone and trying to recall all that stuff I learnt at Uni!
🙂