Joining Excel with ArcMap by ModelBuilder?

Question

I am trying to use ModelBuilder in ArcMap 10.

I would like to join an Excel file (xls) with a shapefile.

The Excel file and the shapefile have one identical column with data but the Shp.file contains more data than the xls file.

Therefore I would like to make a join, based on the two identical columns, and get a shape file that contains the data that is identical?

• HDunn: Have you tried the Join tool? help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#//…

Answer 1

There is an article from ESRI, which describes how to Join an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) to a feature class in ArcMap: http://support.esri.com/en/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/31793

The article contains information about possible formatting problems and solutions. Since you want to use ModelBuilder you should have a look on the Add Join Tool (ArcToolbox). In the ArcGIS 10.0 Help it is written that you can use OLE DB tables as join tables. MS Excel tables can be read when accessed directly in ArcGIS or through OLE DB. So it should be possible to use Excel tables with the Add Join Tool.

With ArcGIS 10.1 you can directly join MS Excel tables with ohter Feature Layers or tables using the Add Join Tool in ModelBuilder.

A white paper about MS Excel (accessed through OLE DB): http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0104/files/excel.pdf

Another Q&A in gis.stackexchange about problems with joining an excel table to a shapefile in ArcMap is Joining Excel table to shapefile in ArcMap?