Cannot delete records from a table

[harrybowman]

1. Start Edit session
2. Open table
3. Select records

Delete button on keyboard does not delete records.
Delete (X) button on table view tool bar does not light up.

No help from UI. ArcGIS Help tells me to do the steps I already am doing.

4. Abandon ArcGIS for other software to get work done...again.
5. Proposed regressing to ArcView 3.3 again. Japan is still on 3.3 (stability, performance).

Don't remember the software being this difficult to use - a constant struggle to get anything useful done. Terrible.

[rthopper]

Harry,

What type of table is it? Geodatabase table (pgdb, fgdb, sde), dbf, etc.

Where does the table reside? Local machine, server, etc.

[harrybowman]

Happens inconstistently, to both DBF and FGDB tables. Tables are always local on drives. No guidance in the help as to what might be wrong in the cases where delete is not enabled. Edit session starts, but...

[curtvprice]

Happens inconstistently, to both DBF and FGDB tables. Tables are always local on drives. No guidance in the help as to what might be wrong in the cases where delete is not enabled. Edit session starts, but...

It's very important to select the edit workspace that matches your table. For example, if it's a .dbf table, use the folder workspace, for file GDB make sure you select the FGDB workspace. In Arc 10, there you can optionally select the layer or table you want to edit and the workspace is selected automatically.

You also may want to try the Delete Rows tool, which can be used on a layer input. Run Select By Attributes or select rows interactively, then run the tool on the layer or table view. The selected rows are then deleted from the dataset that the layer references.