Field not diplaying in Quantities Symbology

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22
06-05-2014 03:46 PM
MelissaTraverso
New Contributor III
Hi I am trying to create a graduate color quantities symbology for a string field in my attribute table but in the drop down menu it doesn't show up. If I go to categories>unique values it shows up in the drop down of the field values. Does anyone know why? Or what I could be doing wrong?

Thanks
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22 Replies
IanMurray
Frequent Contributor
I'm fairly certain that for the Quantities symbology, you must have a field that is a numeric type, that is to say Short Integer, Long Integer, Float or Double.  I'm guessing you are using a text field, which won't show up as a possible selection for the quantities symbology.  If all your data in your text field is numbers, then you should be able to make a new numeric field and set that field equal to the text field and symboloize off that field.

Either that or if the field is a joined field, it will not show up, you need to make a new field and copy the values of the joined field to it.
brrh96
by
New Contributor

hi. how can i change type of the fields?

 

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MelissaTraverso
New Contributor III
Thanks! This sounds like it will work. Do you know what I would set for my field calculator once I have created a double field? can I just said <new field>=<old field>
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IanMurray
Frequent Contributor
That should be fine as long as all the values in the other fields are numbers.  A double field type won't support any letters or symbols.
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MelissaTraverso
New Contributor III
I have 7 null values in this field which is probably why it was initially marked as a string while the rest of the number fields were set as long integer/double. Does this mean using the quantities symbology tab on this field won't work?
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IanMurray
Frequent Contributor
I don't think it will since the field type is already defined.  However, you can replace the null values as seen here.  Then you should be able to make the new numeric field and use the field calculator and have  <new field>=<old field> and then you should be able to find it for the quantities symbology.
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MelissaTraverso
New Contributor III
Thanks so much for the help thus far. The only way it will let me Add a field is if I convert it to a feature class within a geodatabase. I tried to add field after saving it as a layer file and it isn't an option. THe only thing that seems to work is when I use the conversion tool and save it into my geodatabase and use this new feature class. However in the process it says it was executed successfully but when I zoom to layer one of the points gets thrown out in the middle of nowhere which isn't how it was prior as a resulting layer from displaying the xy data of the original excel table. Suggestions ?
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IanMurray
Frequent Contributor
Ah, you are creating this from an excel spreadsheet.  I just did a test and if you select the column with your values in excel and rightclick and select format cells and change the category to numeric, it will bring the field into ARCgis as a double, instead of text, which is what it bring it in as if the format in excel is general.
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MelissaTraverso
New Contributor III
True! But I was having difficulty displaying XY data with the excel spreadsheet because the attribute table wouldn't carry over to the new layer so I saved the excel file as a CSV. In the CSV all columns (even numeric) seem to be formatted as general in excel with no specific number format and when brought into arcMap to display xy data all numeric fields except this particular field I have been working on take the correct numeric format to be displayed under quantities symbology and the attribute table carries over. I went into the csv to try and format this field as numeric but it won't let me save it without giving me the following message below. when I click yes and save it anyway I ordered this column descending in the attribute table in ArcMap and noticed that I lose some of the values.
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