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I have a shapefile and I want to change the order of the features. Is that possible using ArcMap?

Thank you!

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I don't really understand the question. Why do you want to reorder the records? Is it for display purposes? Graphically or for the attributes? Just a reminder to the question as well as some answers authors, nothing should rely on the order of the records as they are sent in a response to a query unless you provide an ORDER BY clause. It can change from a DBMS engine to another, between versions of a DBMS engine, etc. – GuillaumeC Feb 7 '11 at 8:09
You want to reorder the records for whatever purpose you need them to reordered... Such as building a graph (from the attribute table which will not respect the sort on-the-fly, but will respect when sorted permanently). And also for the issue of populating a sequential ID based on the sort. It needs to be sorted permanently before it will populate in the order; 1,2,3 etc – SaultDon Feb 7 '11 at 15:48
@GuillaumeC I want to sort the features in the shapefile because I'm embedding this shapefile in a mobile app. The app will display a list of features, and although I could do the sorting at load time, I'd prefer to have them sorted. I think it's a legitimate reason, isn't it? – tato Feb 7 '11 at 21:10
3  
The goal is legitimate, the mean is not. If you need them sorted, use the result of a query, don't assume they are and will remain sorted. – GuillaumeC Feb 8 '11 at 7:49

4 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

You can always open the attribute table in ArcMap and right click the columns header and select Sort Ascending.../Descending... for single fields.

For multiple fields you would instead click Advanced Sorting to select multiple fields.

NOTE: Adding, for instance, a sequential ID field based on the current sorting (which is temporary, stored only in this map/mxd) when using the above method will be ordered by the original OID/ObjectID of the feature class.

There is an ArcScripts available that will sort records permanently and output a new shapefile: http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=16771

I do hope that when you state 'order of features' that this is the order found in the attribute table and not drawing order for the table of contents/symbology levels.

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the script seems promising, as soon as I can try it I will mark the answer as 'the right one' – tato Feb 6 '11 at 23:42
it worked, as expected – tato Feb 12 '11 at 17:09
up vote 5 down vote

I don't know about Arc*, but for QGIS there is a Sort plugin: http://michaelminn.com/linux/mmqgis/

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up vote 4 down vote

If you have access to an arcinfo license, you can use the Sort in the (Data Management toolbox) which writes the records into a new shapefiles or gdb fc based spatial or attribute sorting

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unfortunately it works with FGDB, not with shapes – tato Feb 7 '11 at 21:11
tato, the tool works with fgdb or shapefile as input and output, i've no idea what your comment above means. – gotchula Feb 8 '11 at 0:05
up vote 3 down vote

An utility software of MapServer (free and open-source) can sort shapes according to attributes values :

http://mapserver.org/utilities/sortshp.html

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