Combining Layers not outputting correctly in QGIS?

Question

I have two shapefiles I'm trying merge together. I want to use this shapefile in another application I use. When I import them in QGIS, they look exactly how I want them to be positioned (relative to one another). The yellow dots in the image below are from one file (Utah city locations) and the purple dots are from another file (Wyoming city locations)

The CRS for the Utah cities is "EPSG:26912, NAD83 / UTM zone 12N" and the Wyoming ones is a generated one (which I assume is because there isn't a projection file for that shapefile: "+proj=lcc +lat_1=41 +lat_2=45 +lat_0=41 +lon_0=-107.5 +x_0=500000 +y_0=200000 +ellps=GRS80 +towgs84=0,0,0,0,0,0,0 +units=m +no_defs"

Pre merge

The problem is, when I attempt to merge them using the vector data management tools (taskbar: Vector-->Data Management Tools-->Merge Shapefiles to One), I get a result that looks like this:

Post merging

I have no idea why this is happening, I would think I should get the output that I'm seeing visually before I merge. Here's a screenshot of the merge tool:

Merge tool screenshot

Any ideas on how to fix this issue?

• whyzar: Can you share a screen shot of the merge tool with your inputs? Also, what are the CRS for each shapefile?
• AndreJ: You must resave one layer to the CRS of the other. Otherwise it would not work.
• AndreJ: Right-click on the Wyoming layer, Save as ... to a new file Wyoming-UTM12N.shp, and choose EPSG:26912 in the CRS box below. The layer will be added to canvas, then remove the old Wyoming one, and set the Project CRS to EPSG:26912 too, and uncheck `on-the fly-reprojection in the Project properties, CRS tab. The points should still be next to each others, then start merging. Alternatively, you can copy and paste Wyoming features to the Utah layer. The latter must be in edit mode for that.

Answer 1

Per @AndreJ's suggestion, I looked into resaving the layer as another CRS. I followed the general outline here under section 7.1.3. In this case, I right mouse-clicked on the Wyoming City layer and under the "Save vector layer as..." dialog box that appeared, I set the following options:

• Format: ESRI Shapefile
• Save as: set to any location on my C drive
• CRS: for this one, I clicked on the Select CRS browser botton on the right which allowed me to sort through lists of CRS' and select "EPSG:26912, NAD83 / UTM zone 12N" to match the other layer

I left the rest of the options as the default.

After I resaved the layer, I was able to combine the two layers using the merge tool just fine to get the output I wanted. Thanks for the suggestions and help!