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I have a shapefile that has a field that is string(12) and some rows contain 2 greek characters. When I open the shapefile in ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro and select export data, all the rows that contain the greek characters, become 10 characters (ex, if I had 98765AE43210, on export, becomes 98765AE43-lose last 2 characters).

I already done the following;

I open the shapefile in QGIS, and the field in properties has datatype text(14).

I create a new field in ArcMap / ArcGIS Pro / QGis with datatype string(12) and in ESRI products get 10 characters and in QGIS, 14 characters!

If you import the shapefile in a file geodatabase, as a feature dataset, all working right, until the export from the feature dataset to shapefile, where again we have 10 characters.

Any Ideas on how to solve this problem?

PolyGeo
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John Deligiannis
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    shapefile is an old format so the encoding is limited. But did you try to specify encoding with a cpg file ? https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/which-character-encoding-is-used-by-the-dbf-file-in-shapefiles – radouxju Mar 02 '23 at 11:27

1 Answers1

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The problem here is the length that the greek character's code require push the field limit over the 10 characters that are only allowed in shapefiles.

This seems to answer via possible workarounds as shapefiles can only store 10 places (workarounds)

In particular - have the geometry stored in the shp with a linking field to a .csv with the longer names. This is a very simple option but not sustainable for ongoing work.

Em Hain
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  • While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. - From Review – Vince Apr 05 '23 at 02:12
  • I have reviewed and added in the workaround. – Em Hain Apr 05 '23 at 02:58