Open Attribut Table gray

[RichardCockerham]

Hello, I have a fresh install of ArcMap 10 on several computers (government floating license) and none of the projects I've used have actually let me click on the open atttribut table button on any of the computers.  i can right click the layer and choose to open the table but why is the button always gray?  Is there something to turn on/off?

[WilliamMortimer]

Hi There,
Normally with Esri when you have a command / task that is 'greyed' out it normally means you can't select it for a reason.
These are normally:
1. You are editing it/not editing etc.
2. You dont have the required licence level (arceditor / arcinfo) or it requires another package eg spatial analyst.
3. Some other specific issue.

Looking at your attribute table question:
1. Tabs
With arc 10 now when you open multiple attribute tables it adds them to a common attribute table with a tab.
Non active attribute tables here have a grey tab.

2. Selections
You could also be looking at the 'selection' attribute table - if you dont have any thing selected it will also appear grey.

3. Data
If you dont have any physical records - the attribute table will only show the fields in the schema.

Hope this helps in some way.
William.

[RosieBell]

I didn't realise there was a button to do this, so I added to my toolbar to see what it would do. It is always greyed out for me, too. I think it's because ArcGIS doesn't recognise an active layer (even if selected in TOC) so the button doesn't know which layer to open. Possibly a redundant feature from earlier versions? The ArcGIS 10.1 help files don't make any mention of it.

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//005s00000002000000

The keyboard shortcut CTRL_T works to open the selected layer in the TOC - this may help.