Unable to add shapefile. Receive an "Open Failed - Error Opening Feature Class" when trying to open in ArcMap

Question

When I attempt to add a shapefile from a folder to my ArcMap document I receive this message.

Why am I unable to add this shapefile? I've looked around for a similar issue, however other posts deal with open error "Getting “Failed to open tool” message when trying to run geoprocessing tool from C# code" or Error opening feature class of geodatabase in ArcGIS for Desktop? Don't really deal with my same issue.

Here is the message I receive:

All of the files and folders are in the same format and accessible the same way.

All the extensions are available and don't appear to be corrupt in anyway.

Here my shapefile icon displays black question mark in a green box.

Here are all the files in ArcMap except for the "glpv1" shapefile

When I open the file using QGIS, it displays and works just fine.

Answer 1

Related to my comment, the minimum files to make up a shapefile are the .dbf, .shx, and .shp (.prj is nice to have too). You are missing the glpv1.dbf file.

Answer 2

You can generate a simple *.dbf file with Python as follows:

import shapefile # pyshp
import dbf
import os.path

fn_shp = "glpv1.shp"
myshp = open(fn_shp, "rb")

# If dbf does not exist, create one
fn_dbf = os.path.splitext(fn_shp)[0] + ".dbf"
if not os.path.exists(fn_dbf):
    r = shapefile.Reader(shp=myshp)
    n = len(r.shapes())
    db = dbf.Table(fn_dbf, 'ID N(8,0);')
    with db:
        for i in range(1, n+1):
            db.append((i,))
    r.close()