ArcGIS 10: Exporting part of an attribute table and renaming fields

Q: I want to create a dbf file containing a few columns from my layer's attribute table to send to a collaborator. I also want to rename some of the fields so she doesn't have to translate my shorthand. Please help!

A: Gladly!

First, you want to turn off the fields you are not interested in exporting: Open your attribute table, right click the field of (un)interest, and select "turn field off". This should remove it from view, but don't worry... you can undo this command by clicking the table options in the upper right corner of the attribute table (the icon looks like a bulleted paper)and selecting "Turn all fields on".

Back to the problem at hand... repeat turning off all of the fields you aren't interested in sharing. Now export the data as a dbf (check this post for info). Use Excel to open the dbf file.

Note that you can of course export your entire attribute table to Excel and remove unwanted fields by deleting the columns in Excel instead of hiding them in ArcGIS, but sometimes there are exportation restrictions on sensitive data, so I wanted to outline how to avoid importing prohibited data into a new program.

The file still has your original field names. We didn't change those in ArcGIS 10 because field aliases are lost when you export the data, so now we just change the column names in Excel.

And now for the silliest step... Excel 2007 won't save files as dbf,so we have to save the Excel file in the old .xls format (Save As Excel 97-2003 Workbook) and re-import it into ArcGIS (notes here) to then export it again as dBase (dbf). Horray for hoops!

ArcGIS fields: What's the difference between "address" and "ARC_Street"?

From Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop, Ormsby et al:

"When you rematch unmatched addresses, you can edit the values in ARC_Street and ARC_Zone to make matches. You would do this, for example, if you found mistakes in the (original data) table. The ADDRESS and ZIP attributes, on the other hand, preserves the original information from the (original data) table."

Importing Excel 2007 into ArcGIS 10

Save table as old Excel file .xls. Check for the following (from webhelp@esri):

1. Make sure the first row of the worksheet is properly formatted, since it will be used for the field names in ArcGIS. You should follow these general best practices for field naming, particularly if you want to join an Excel table to another table in ArcMap:

Field names must start with a letter.
Field names must contain only letters, numbers, and underscores.
Field names must not exceed 64 characters.

2. If you have cells with numeric data, dates, and so on, make sure the content is consistently formatted. ArcMap will scan the first eight rows to determine the field type that should be used. If there are other types of data in those rows, the field will be converted to text when the table is in ArcMap.

3. ArcMap can only read the first 255 characters of a cell. If you have more characters than that, ArcMap converts the field to a BLOB type and you won't be able to read its contents.

Exporting ArcGIS 10 attribute table to Excel 2007

Open attribute table. Table options in upper left (button looks like bulleted paper) -> export -> export: all records; output table: save as type dBASE Table in desired folder.

Open folder and manually select Open With: Excel

Creating a 2x2 table in R

EX: Want to create a 2x2 table with the following data: Column A value (336 and 955) and Column B value (355 and 947)

Note from R-tutorial: "When we construct a matrix directly with data elements, the matrix content is filled along the column orientation by default"

Code:
> B = matrix (c(336, 955, 355, 947), nrow=2, ncol=2)

Check:
> B

Should see output:
[,1] [,2]
[1,] 336 355
[2,] 955 947