🗺️ Geocoding Schools in Manatee County: A Coordinate System Saga
This week’s lab was all about geocoding schools in Manatee County, FL — and let me just say, what started out sounding straightforward turned into a bit of a software scavenger hunt. The objective was clear enough: clean up a dataset of school addresses, download TIGER shapefiles, project everything to the correct coordinate system, create an address locator, and geocode. Easy… in theory.
📐 The Great Coordinate System Hunt
The lab called for NAD1983 (2011) HARN State Plane Florida West FIPS 0902 Feet, which makes total sense geographically and for road data. Unfortunately, ArcGIS Pro didn’t seem to agree. The projection wasn’t in the software by default, so I had to hunt it down, download it, and manually import it. This step felt more like a mini-quest than a lab task. Definitely not something you expect to spend 15 minutes Googling in the middle of a geocoding exercise.
📊 Table to Table… Or Not
The instructions referenced the trusty Table to Table tool, which—plot twist—doesn’t seem to exist in ArcGIS anymore. I thought I was losing my mind at first. After some trial and error (and muttering at my screen), I ended up using Excel to Table to bring the cleaned CSV into the project. It worked, but it definitely wasn’t the smooth, one-click experience the lab write-up implied.
📌 Create Locator: The Incomplete Puzzle
Creating the address locator was its own mini-nightmare. The screenshots and instructions felt incomplete—like trying to follow a recipe with half the ingredients missing. I kept thinking it was “just me,” until I checked the discussion board. Turns out… it was everyone. The field mapping, zip codes, and alias fields didn’t quite line up like the screenshots. Misery loves company, and apparently many of us love to do the lab the day before it’s due.
🧭 Geocoding & Rematching
Once the locator finally ran, the geocoding itself was mostly fine—except for the handful of unmatched addresses. Rematching those felt like being part GIS analyst, part detective. Between toggling layers, adding a hybrid basemap, and sometimes looking up schools on Google Maps, I eventually placed each stubborn point manually. It was a little tedious but also oddly satisfying once the last one snapped into place.
🌐 Sharing the Final Map
As a final step, I published my Schools_Geocoded layer as a web map, complete with a title, description, tags, and basemap. The link makes it easy to share my results with classmates and instructors without needing them to open ArcGIS Pro.
https://arcg.is/0OHfLn2
💡 Takeaways
Despite the hiccups, this lab was a great exercise in flexibility and problem-solving. Not everything in ArcGIS works exactly like the videos or handouts, and sometimes you have to improvise. I also learned that I’m not alone in saving labs for the final day—and that the discussion posts can be just as useful as the official instructions.
Next time, I’ll (try to) start earlier. But hey, at least I came out with a properly geocoded Manatee County schools layer, a shareable web map, and a few new troubleshooting skills.
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