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How can I delete a row in a raster file table? The raster format is GRID I get this error "grid attribute table is blocked from deletion".

It seems absurd that I am not able to manipulate my own file. I am on ArcGIS 10.2 and the delete rows tool only works with shapefiles.

edit: my ultimate goal is to have a raster that only contains the pixel types I want to select and keep the attribute table intact, because I will need to use this raster for other operations.

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You cannot directly delete a row in a raster attribute table. This is because deleting a row would essentially be reclassifying the cells in that grid to NoData within the attribute table, which is not supported in ArcGIS.

ArcGIS has a variety of tools to effectively "delete rows" including (to name a few) Reclassify and Con. These tools actually replace certain values with user specified values, which can be NoData in your case.

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  • Thanks for the suggestion, I have tried both tools but I am unhappy with the outcome. With both I lose all the other fields in the attribute table. Reclassify throws a warning that "input raster max is out of range" and Con does not accept nodata as a new value, I tried to enter -32768 but it just replaces that in the new raster and the entry appears in the table as a regular value. I might have to try R, unless someone has a better solution.
    – Herman Toothrot
    Commented Oct 10, 2014 at 7:46
  • @user4050 What is your ultimate goal? Why do you want to delete rows in the attribute table? Is there another way to state what you are doing--for example, you are trying to convert land cover classes with a value of 11 to NoData? Thanks for the additional information.
    – Aaron ♦
    Commented Oct 10, 2014 at 14:07

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