Merging shapefiles freezes

Question

I am trying to merge shapefiles in QGIS it stops each time at 19%. The program doesn't show me any error messages so I don't know what is going on.

Both shapefiles are 1.9 GB. Also I noticed that coordinate information in one of the shape files is not complete (missing data)

I am wondering, how merging of shapefiles work, on what criteria are they merged?

I suspect that there is missing data in those shapefiles. Is there any strategy how to deal with this situation?

Are either of the shape files corrupt? Does or will the final shape file exceed 2GB for either of the .shp or .dbf? — Michael Stimson, Dec 16, 2014 at 0:19
Probably yes. Both shapefiles are 1.9 GB. Also I noticed that coordinate information in one of the shape files is not complete (missing data) — Alex, Dec 16, 2014 at 0:45
FAQ: Are there file size limitations for shapefiles?. PS please edit your questions to include further information rather than posting as comments. This saves potential answerers from having to wade through comments to get all of the necessary information. — user2856, Dec 16, 2014 at 1:15
That looks like an answer to me @Luke. From the sounds of it you're hitting the maximum file size for a shapefile (2GiB for any of the components, most likely the .dbf or .shp) - time to choose another vector format like PostGis, Personal or File Geodatabase, MapInfo TAB etc. — Michael Stimson, Dec 16, 2014 at 1:27
@MichaelMiles-Stimson, no time for full answer, hence comment. — user2856, Dec 16, 2014 at 3:11

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-13 12:33:53Z

2

It gives you the opportunity to see error messages, as well as saving valuable RAM that is used by the QGIS GUI.

The shapefile 2GB limit that you cross can not be solved by that, so you need another output format, like spatialite database.

CommunityBot

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answered Dec 16, 2014 at 11:21

AndreJ

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