Importing legacy shapefiles and attribute information to geodatabase

Question

I am trying to take older sewer/water system shapefile data with limited, but important attribute information and importing it in to a feature class in a geodatabase, while keeping the attribute information. These older files do not have similar field names as the geodatabase in which to import the attribute information.

Any advice in which to complete this task is greatly appreciated. The solution does not neccesarily have to be solved programmatically.

Answer 1

I would suggest first trying the "Append" geoprocessing tool and using the schema type = "NO_TEST" and "Field Map" option to map your legacy field data to the appropriate fields in the new geodatabase.

Of course, make a backup of your datasets before you experiment with any of the GP tools.