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Export data from Excel	Timothy abdella	May 21, 2008
Re: Export data from Excel	mark squires	May 22, 2008
Re: Export data from Excel	Timothy abdella	May 22, 2008
Re: Export data from Excel	Jeff M	May 22, 2008
Re: Export data from Excel	Timothy abdella	May 22, 2008
Re: Export data from Excel	Jeff M	May 22, 2008
Re: Export data from Excel	Zahid Chaudhry	May 28, 2008
Re: Export data from Excel	Gary Barden	May 28, 2008
Re: Export data from Excel	Timothy abdella	May 28, 2008

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Subject	Export data from Excel
Author	Timothy abdella
Date	May 21, 2008
Message	When exporting X Y Event data from an Excel data source ArcMap crashes. An "empty" shapefile is created in the correct directoy. I was able to reproduce this several times.

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Subject	Re: Export data from Excel
Author	mark squires
Date	May 22, 2008
Message	Hi Timothy, Did the Excel file contain any foreign characters in the field names (ex. spaces, hyphens, numeric leading fields)? Could you please provide a copy of the Excel file you're currently using?
	Mark (ESRI)

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Subject	Re: Export data from Excel
Author	Timothy abdella
Date	May 22, 2008
Message	Mark, It did, my stupid mistake. Once I removed the special characters it worked fine. I still don't like that ArcMap crashes, it should give a warning like "your data has special characters so it cannot be exported, please remove the special characters and try again" At the very least the export should fail, not the application.

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Subject	Re: Export data from Excel
Author	Jeff M
Date	May 22, 2008
Message	You are correct - ArcMap shouldnt crash if it encounters special characters. Worst case scenario would be the tool fails gracefully. I am not able to reproduce the crash - and i have test excel files that break every field naming convention in the book. In fact, even though excel field naming conventions are documented in the help now, I can almost always create and export event layers, even with illegal characters. ESRI would be interested in seeing your excel file. Can you reply to this thread with it attached? Explicit steps to repro would be good, e.g. are you using ArcMap or GP tools, what version of Excel it was created in, etc.
	Jeff M. Development Technical Lead (Desktop) User Advocacy Group (UAG) ESRI Support Services

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Subject	Re: Export data from Excel
Author	Timothy abdella
Date	May 22, 2008
Message	Detailed steps to reproduce: Add data to ArcMap (anything), just so it sets a spatial reference in the data frame (US States is a good choice) Add the Excel spread Sheet using the named range "ForGIS", I removed all of the confidential data out of the file, the only thing left is the X,Y. Right click on table in TOC and create Event Theme from X,Y Data, set coordinate system to WGS 1984. Right click on Event Theme and navigate to Data --> export data. Save data as a shapefile on disk, use the data's source coordinate system (not the data frame) Every time I do this, ArcMap just disappears :)
	sample excel.xls (opens in new window)

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Subject	Re: Export data from Excel
Author	Jeff M
Date	May 22, 2008
Message	Thanks for the data. I was able to repro at 9.2 and 9.3. The problem was specifically the comma in one of your field names. Once I removed the comma, everything was fine. Even keeping your other fields with special characters didnt cause a problem. I logged a bug for the crash. The tracking number is NIM035527. It is still good practice to not use spaces and special characters in field names in ArcGIS. You may experience other problems, such as joins not working. If you want, you can send me the name of your client site and I will add you to the bug. However, this is totally optional.
	Jeff M. Development Technical Lead (Desktop) User Advocacy Group (UAG) ESRI Support Services

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Subject	Re: Export data from Excel
Author	Zahid Chaudhry
Date	May 28, 2008
Message	Sometime in our department, 90 % cases, its sapces in the dirctory tree and name (with spaces) of the excel file causing all trouble. I guess we can blame on Microsoft for this.

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Subject	Re: Export data from Excel
Author	Gary Barden
Date	May 28, 2008
Message	Just wondering what version of Excel? We're running 2007 and I find a lot of issues when trying to use the xlsx or even files saved as the older xls. I end up bringing the Excel file into Access and creating a dbf just to be safe. Gary

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Subject	Re: Export data from Excel
Author	Timothy abdella
Date	May 28, 2008
Message	It was an excel 2003 document. I have not attempted the excel 2007 format yet.