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I would like to be able to select a contiguous set of horizontal cells in a row, take a copy, then paste the values into another row at the same position in the same table. I do not want to copy all the attributes, only a subset, but they are at least contiguous. At the moment I am doing a simple copy-paste cell-by-cell, and it is very time consuming, not to mention frought with error. If it were in a spreadsheet, it would be as simple as highlighting the group of horizontal cells, taking a copy, move the cell cursor down one cell, and then doing a paste. Is this possible without going through an export/edit/import process. Thoughts greatly appreciated. Barrie

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There is an existing ArcGIS Idea covering this functionality that you can vote for.

In the meantime a workaround may be as follows:

  1. This will work only on a feature class NOT a table so if you need a table create a feature class with the same number of records and use Join Fields to make a temporary feature class that you can turn back to a table later.
  2. Hide all Fields on the Properties of the feature class except the ones you want to copy/paste - they do not have to be adjacent
  3. Start Editing
  4. Select All
  5. Open the Attributes (Editing) window
  6. Right click on one row (which only has the unhidden fields) to Copy it
  7. Right click on another row (or rows) and Paste
  8. Unhide all the Fields again and you will see that just the cells unhidden during the Copy/Paste operation were changed

Personally, I would be more inclined to use the export/edit/import via Excel route that you suggested.

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Thank you for your advice. I am working off-site today (in a non-ArcGIS environment) but will experiment with your idea tomorrow. Regarding the export/edit/import route, I am basically working with pairs of polylines at a time, selecting the pair, copying attribute data from one to the other, then moving on to the next pair. It's a road network and there is no consistency - it's a case of dealing with one road segment at a time. The export route would involve export/edit/import for each pair, and it is faster to do multiple copy/pastes between the rows in the table. – Barrie Slattery Jan 30 at 22:29
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You have not tagged/mentioned which ArcGIS version you are using but if it is ArcGIS 10.1 it might be worth investigating whether a Python Add-in could speed up this workflow. – PolyGeo Jan 30 at 23:13
Sorry, yes I should have mentioned that - it's 10.1 (using an ArcView licence but have access to other levels). Will investigate down that road, thanks for the tip. – Barrie Slattery Jan 31 at 0:51
Have followed the instructions above, which were easy to follow. Thank you again for the suggestion. It's probably not going to be the solution in this case though, due to the speed at which I can get through the steps is comparable to copy-pasting across a table. If only the keystrokes could be recorded into a macro - then it would work a treat. Your advice has been useful in any case, as that functionality was new to me. Thank you – Barrie Slattery Jan 31 at 21:06

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