This coordinate system is likely to be wrong for the data. Right-click the table name in the Table of Contents and select Display XY Data.ĪrcMap applies the coordinate system of the Data Frame to the XY Data.To add the data from the formatted file to ArcMap, select the Add Data button and navigate to the folder where the table containing coordinates is saved on the computer, select the file and click Add.The following steps are performed in ArcMap

Click No when Excel prompts to save the changes. Click Yes if Excel warns that certain formatting is not supported in this file format.

Navigate to File > Save As, and select a supported format from the choices available in Excel.

The exact location depends on the version of Excel being used.

After formatting the fields in the table, select all the cells in populated rows and columns and navigate to File > Print Area > Set Print Area, or Page Layout > Print Area > Set Print Area.

Label columns ID, Longitude, Latitude, Elevation (if included), Description, etc.

Descriptions of the contents of each column are also required in the output file.

The graphic below shows the distribution of positive and negative values for longitude (X) and latitude (Y) coordinates worldwide.įormat the ID field as Number, with no decimal places.įormat Longitude and Latitude as Number, with at least 8 and up to 11 decimal places.įormat Elevation as Number, with up to 2 decimal places.įormat Description as text, with a length up to 255. For coordinates in meters or feet, 2 or 3 decimal places are sufficient. To ensure ArcMap reads the data in the file correctly, use Excel to format the columns containing the Longitude (X, or Easting) and Latitude (Y, or Northing) values as NUMBER, with a minimum of 8 decimal places for decimal degree data.Post-2003, Excel no longer generates files in dBase format. The steps below give instructions for formatting XY coordinates, using Microsoft Excel, and converting these data to a shapefile or geodatabase feature class in ArcMap.ĪrcMap can read several table formats, including dBase III dBase IV.

How To: Import XY data to ArcMap and convert the data to shapefile or feature class at ArcMap 10.1 and later versions SummaryĪrcMap (and ArcGIS Pro) cannot read data in degrees-minutes-seconds (DMS), and therefore this data must be converted into decimal degrees (DD) before importing.

Dms to dd excel