Perform "Add Join" on multiple tables ArcMap or R

Question

The operation I want to perform is the Add join in ArcMap 10.0. It works perfectly when done with one file but I need to do it with a few hundreds tables.

What I have is ONE shapefile with divisions, and multiple tables for different years/species. For each table I want to add join to the shapefile and save the result.

I am trying to use model builder and the problem I have is that in the "layer name or table view" input it doesn't let me pick a shapefile unless it's loaded in the workspace. Also when I use the "copy features" to save the result of the add join to disk, it messes up the column names of the new shapefile. I also don't want to use the Join Field because it doesn't have the option Keep All that Add Join has.

Does anybody have a solution for this? I can try in Python or R if it's needed. I am adding links to the two files table shapefile Thanks

Answer 1

Right click on the "Add Join" tool, the batch option should be available. Might take some time to set up for hundreds of records.

• Herman Toothrot: I see that, I will have to try but I am doing more than 300 join I am not sure it's feasible.

Answer 2

ok for the record I found a solution. I loaded the division shape file that makes up the zone in the workspace, then i did a join with one of the existing tables and I added "remove join". That solved the issue for some reason. So I iterated through the tables in a folder and then saved the output as a shapefile.