ArcMap is not recognising data as numeric

[pdigenov]

I have an excel (office 2007) table with x, y lat/long data. I add the table to my map, and right click it in the table of contents to "Display XY Data...", but the dropdowns only show my "Name"column (my names are numbers). I figured out that this is because arcmap isn't recognizing the data in the x and y columns as numeric, even though I did go into excel and specify them as such. Is there a way to fix this? How can I change them so that arcmap recognizes them as numeric?
Thanks in advance for any help. I just started learning gis recently, and got arcmap 10 only a week ago, so this is all very new to me.

[swhitti1]

pdigenov


In Excel you should be able to create a new column and use =VALUE(text) insert the first row of your x value in, copy paste for all x, and do the same for all y coordinates. Once you have done this the x,y coordinates should be numbers now. Copy the new column and paste > paste special > Value. Once you have done this you should not run into the issue of the fields not being formatted as a number. User the following KB artible to walk your through the rest of the process.


HowTo: Import XY data tables to ArcMap and convert the data to a shapefile
http://support.esri.com/en/knowledge...s/detail/27589

[pdigenov]

This works YAY! Thank you for the info.

But my new problem is that the point(s?- I can't tell if it's even importing more than one point) show up off the coast of west africa, when the gps coordinates are from California. I specified the coordinate system as WGS 84, as I read that this is what the Bing map basemap is in, but maybe I chose the wrong one?
This is what comes up in the properties

Projected Coordinate System: WGS_1984_Web_Mercator_Auxiliary_Sphere
Projection: Mercator_Auxiliary_Sphere
False_Easting: 0.00000000
False_Northing: 0.00000000
Central_Meridian: 0.00000000
Standard_Parallel_1: 0.00000000
Auxiliary_Sphere_Type: 0.00000000
Linear Unit: Meter

Does this look like the right projection for matchup on the Bing Aerial basemap?

[tyoungs]

Assuming the coordinates are basic lat/long in decimal degrees, It should probably be in WGS 1984 (Geographic coordinate systems=>world=>wgs 1984 in the define projection dialog, not WGS_1984_web_mercator_auxillary_sphere)