Converting a table of Lat / Long values into a Shapefile

hello everyone in this video what I'm going to do is convert a table of latitude longitude coordinates into a shapefile using ArcGIS software version 10 so here's my table of coordinate values note that I have a few fields here describing something about these values and I also have longitude and latitude columns in decimal degree format that is critical in this process also in my top row I have a header explaining what each column is so that's also important so I've saved this excel file and now going to import these coordinates into arcmap software so in arcmap I'm going to click file add data and the add XY data choice this gives me a dialog window in which I will specify the table I'm going to add from by clicking the Browse button and I've saved this in a folder called C demo and I see my coordinate List excel file I double click it and I see the workbooks within I've named the workbook coordinate list so I'll choose that now I want to specify which fields are red in as the X field the x field I want to make sure to specify as longitude and then the y field I want to make sure is specified as latitude now another important thing to do is to specify the coordinate system here it defaulted to WGS 1984 as my geographic coordinate system and that's what my coordinates are in so at this point I'll leave that how it is if I wanted to change that I would click the edit button but this looks now I'll click okay a message comes up telling me I don't have an object ID failed in the table and that's fine that's just a standard message it comes up click OK for that and now I see a layer on my map called coordinate lists events and I see some points on my map with little green symbols here which I'll turn into larger green dots what this is this events layer is a layer that's stored in memory where arcmap is reading from my excel spreadsheet reading in the coordinates and displaying the points on the map when i close arcmap this is going to go away so what i want to do is save this to a permanent file I'm going to save this to a shape file so it's on disk and I can use this in other maps or email it to someone or do other things with it so to do that I'm going to right click right on the text to your coordinate list events and go down and choose the data option and then the export data sub option and make sure all features are specified leave the coordinate system choice the same and then I'll specify an output feature class click OK I'll say yes when it asks me if I want to add the map is a map layer and now I have a shapefile that is in the exact same position of everything of all my coordinates in my coordinate List excel file if I right click on this shape file and choose open attribute table I see that all of my attributes came in as well and one final check that I might want to do is to add a base map and I do that by clicking the little arrow right next to the add data button and I'll see an add base map option I have several base maps to choose from I'll choose one and click Add I have to be online to add since it is getting this data from from a server and now I can inspect the positions of my points and see that everything's in the United States and that my table of latitude longitude coordinates was added to arcmap it is now in a shapefile thanks for watching that's the end of this video

Channel: Harvard CGA

Views: 196,633

Rating: 4.9240165 out of 5

Keywords: GIS, training

Id: xk3b7l8EuIk

Length: 4min 56sec (296 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 18 2011