Esri Mapping Center - Ask a Cartographer

How to dispaly x/y coordinates from a point layer's attribute table

August 05 2008 | 5 comments
Categories: Map Data

I am an ArcGIS 9.0 user and will like to know how to dispaly x/y coordinates from a point layer's attribute table

Mapping Center Answer:

Since the Add XY data tool (tools menu) only takes a table as input, you'll need to create a table from your point layer. To do that in ArcMap, open the Attribute table for your point layer, then click the Options button and choose Export and set the export file name to where you want to write a table. Then add that table to ArcMap and you'll be able to create a dataset from the XY coordinates in the table.

do you mean display as text on screen/map? posted by Peter Kasianchuk on Aug 8 2008 8:30AM

Another interpretation of your question might be that you already have point features, but want to show their coordinates either on screen or on a map. There are a couple of ways you could approach this: on-the-fly from an Advanced Label Expression, or as a new set of attributes added to the feature class table from which you create labels. Either way, you'll need to add some code to extract the X/Y values from the [SHAPE] field. Start with ArcScripts, keyword "X/Y Coordinates" - one that I've used for quite a while is download number AS10540.

Calculate Geometry posted by Aileen Buckley on Aug 8 2008 5:58PM

In 9.2, you can use teh Calculate Geometry function to add the x and y coordinates to your attribute table. Once you have the field in the table (type = double), simply right click the top of the column in the attribute table and select Calculate Geometry -- there you can add either the x or y coordinates to the field. This won't work for 9.0, though -- sorry.

Many thanks posted by Nkululeko Bhengu on Aug 13 2008 1:32AM

Thanks a lot for your help guys. It really worked. However, I think this calls for an upgrade to 9.2 :-)

Calculate Geometry posted by Hardolph Wasteneys on Aug 24 2008 4:01PM

The "calculate geometry; Add X/Y" tool in 9.2 for displaying the point coordinates of shapefile data causes an unpredictable round-off of numerical data in other fields. Is this a glitch?

Need more info posted by Aileen Buckley on Aug 27 2008 4:36PM

It would be helpful to have more information to be able to investigate this further. Can you please send details?

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