Changing Excel point coordinates in different coordinate system to points in ArcGIS Desktop

Question

I have coordinates in a format e.g. 22°42'39.065"E, 49°4'59.864"N. I tried to add the points using "XY Table to Point" but when I add my Excel file as input, it doesn't recognize the fields as X and Y values. However, when I convert points in that format to DD format it works perfectly.

Is there a way to add those points from an Excel directly, or I need to have my points always in DD format in my Excel database?

Answer 1

For coordinate your X,Y field should be numbers. You have to convert them in DD, you can do it quite easy in excel by extracting firstly DDMMSS by using functions (left and right) than convert them into Decimal Degree DD=dd+(mm+(SS/60))/60.

Answer 2

You could use this website to convert your coordinates then you can use ArcCatalog to convert to shapefile using convert X & Y.

https://www.earthpoint.us/BatchConvert.aspx

Answer 3

You do not need the X and Y fields to be numeric if you use the Convert Coordinate Notation geoprocessing tool. For example, milgrids or UTM can be in one field with spaces and other nonnumeric characters. I am not sure about the degree sign or other special characters and I can't check easily from home. The tool should produce a point file with both your original x y values and optionally a field with another format such as decimal degrees.