Unable to save attribute table after creating new attribute in QGIS?

Question

I have little to no GIS experience. My workplace has no GIS capabilities.

I am using QGIS 3.0.2 (64 bit) on Windows and I created a new attribute for a vector layer (shapefile) through the field calculator by concatenating 5 other attributes. I first tried to do it with the attribute table open (which froze my machine), then tried it without opening the attribute table and it worked.

However, when I disable edit mode and save the attribute table, QGIS just keeps thinking and thinking. I left it running overnight but it was still going in the morning and I ended up shutting it down.

There are approximately 1.9 million entries in the attribute table to be saved and I understand it may take a while but should it take that long to save or am I missing something?

Or is there a better way for me to create a new attribute based on existing attributes so that I can join it to other layers in the future (join based on this new attribute)?

I am concatenating 1 string field, 4 integer fields & hyphens into a 14 character (max) string field (i.e. NW-15-25-15W5 or SE-24-112-10W4).

Answer 1

As @DanC commented, the problem may be the limitations of shapefiles. so it looks like you could benefit from another format.

You could convert your layer(s) form SHP to ("Save As") a GeoPackage. I think this would allow you to concatenate the data as needed.