Working with Geodatabase Datasets - Learning ArcGIS Geodatabases - page 31

Modifying the properties of the attributes
Each attribute has its own properties, which we can change to fit our requirements; this is
what we will be doing in this topic. We have both good and bad news. The good news is
that the client was happy to see the new attributes during the testing session in ArcMap;
however, when they tried to type in a review, they couldn't write more than 50 characters,
which was a bit embarrassing. Also, they want to rename the attribute to be more descript-
ive, for instance, REVIEW should be Restaurant's Review or Diner's Review. We need to
fix this. These are things that did not discuss in Chapter 1 , Authoring Geodatabases , which
are called field properties or attribute properties.
Note
Field properties are the metadata of a given attribute in a feature class, such as alias name,
field size, and default value.
The default length for a text field in a geodatabase file is 50 characters. To modify the field
size for the REVIEW field, perform the following steps:
1. Make sure all instances of ArcMap and ArcCatalog are closed.
2. Open a fresh session of ArcCatalog and browse to your geodatabase.
3. Open the Properties... dialog for the Diner feature class.
4. From the Fields tab, click on the attribute you want to modify; in this case, it is the
REVIEW attribute.
5. Under Field Properties , type Diner's Review in the Alias field, and set the
Length field to 3000 characters instead of 50, as illustrated in the following
screenshot; this field length should be enough for a review: