Generating a table of distances between points and edges of nearest polygons?

Question

I have two shapefiles, one of made up of country borders and one made up of points randomly dotted around an ocean. How do I generate a table of all the distances between the points and the closest edge of a polygon?

So for each point I will have a distance to it's nearest polygon/country.

I've looked at generating a near table but found that I only got distances to one plate (for all the points).

Let me know if you need any more information.

Answer 1

Use the Spatial Join tool.

Target Features: Point features in the ocean.

Join Features: Border features.

Output features: Select the attributes you want to save save probably some ID value with the border feature.

Join Operation: JOIN_ONE_TO_ONE

Match Option: CLOSEST_GEODESIC

Your features sound like they are really far away so you probably want to use geodesic distances