I have exported several dozen shapefiles (CRS ESPG:4326/WGS-84) from Manifold GIS and validated the geography in QGIS. Am now editing the attribute tables in QGIS to have just two fields, an ID column and a PARCEL column. These are mostly all single line or polygon shapefiles.
Some exports lacked a .dbf file and thus have no attribute table. Finding no method to create an attribute table in QGIS, I tested coping/pasting/renaming a .dbf file from a closely related shape export into three shapes lacking .dbf files. Then opened and edited the resulting attribute tables. The results are geographically correct with the desired attribute tables. Is this an appropriate method to create a missing .dbf file? Are there problems?
Past posts have recommended Open Office software for fixing shape .dbf files. But recent posts indicate that Open Office updates have removed that capability.
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to a new file name recreates an empty dbf file too.