[Qgis-us-user] Newbie question about importing shapefiles and layers from Arcmaps

[Randal Hale]

Good morning and welcome to the list: 

If you're going to bring a shapefile into QGIS do one of the three things: 
     *  Use the browser. It's like ArcCatalog and if you don't see it - right click in the toolbar 
section and activate it. It should appear somewhere on the edge and you can navigate to 
your data. 
     *  If you drag and drop your data into QGIS - just drag the shp. Not the prj or any of the 
other files. 
     *  Use the data source manager icon and add it using the vector tools.  Just add the shp. 
it will grab whatever other files it needs. 

QGIS won't lose/truncate your shapefiles. It will also open a ESRI File Based Database for 
viewing. You'll need to convert it to shapefile/geopackage to editing. 

Join the bigger QGIS User list for more news. QGIS (look in the documentation) has a free 
tutorial you can walk through. Email the list. Dig through youtube - the QGIS us group did 
a conference two years ago and there are some workshops up there for free. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7v5qfJYWxA[1]

Enjoy - yell if you get stuck. 

Randy



On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 12:00:38 AM EST Judith Kerman wrote:
> I use Arcmaps as part of my volunteer work as a member of my local planning
> board. I’ve learned to make good use of fairly low-level skills. I’m now
> exploring QGIS as an alternative, especially so I train some other
> volunteers in my town without a budget.
> 
> I find some things puzzling, and don’t know anyone expert I can ask
> questions. For instance, right now, I’m trying to understand what
> information is lost when I import an ArcGIS shapefile. QGIS won’t import
> the .prj files, but the resulting QGIS vector still seems to have the
> correct coordinates. Similar issues with raster files, and with the NY
> State Orthographic files - I can only bring in a TIFF or a jp2, but the map
> seems OK.
> 
> Where can I get tips at my admittedly low level of background. I doubt I
> need high level analytical techniques, python, etc., to do useful work. But
> I’d like to avoid dumb mistakes.
> 
> Suggestions welcome.
> 
> Sent from my iPad


-- 
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Randal Hale 
North River Geographic Systems, Inc 
https://www.northrivergeographic.com
(p) 423.653.3611 
(e) rjhale at northrivergeographic.com

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7v5qfJYWxA
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