shrug-l: RE: Renaming a field name

[Pence, Patrick]

Ken-

Rather than fiddling with the DBF (or if you are using a Geodatabase)...

>From the ESRI Support User Forums:

"The simplest thing to do is to right click on the layer, open the attribute table, add another field with that is the same type, length, and so forth, but name the field the name you want it. Then click on the field so that it is highlighted and right click and select "calculate values". In the top left pane you will see the rest of the fields in your shapefile. Double click on the old field and hit ok. Note: above the text box you should see: NewFieldName = and in the text box you should see OldFieldName. Also you could just bring up the field calculator without highlighting your new field and simply double click on the new field name and then the = sign and then double click on the old field name. "

Patrick

-----Original Message-----
From: shrug-l-bounces at lists.dep.state.fl.us
[mailto:shrug-l-bounces at lists.dep.state.fl.us]On Behalf Of Ken Stocks
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 8:49 AM
To: SHRUG
Subject: shrug-l: Renaming a field name


Does anyone have any advice on how to rename field
names in the attribute table?  I have a shapefile that
consists of joined attribute tables and need to clean
up the field names.  Once in editor mode, I can edit
data within the fields but not the field name.  Can
someone give me a tip on how to rename the field
names?  I have tried to edit field names in the dbf in
excel but it seems to destroy the shapefile.  Its
probably something really simple to fix but I can't
put my finger on it...  

Thanks,

Ken