Joining Two Separate Polygons

Question:  I need to join two distinct polygons in a layer so they are considered one attribute. The 2 polygons are simple non contiguous parcels of land that need to be treated as one parcel. In desktop help, I found the following instructions (I could not find any other reference to joining polygons):

“Select the polygon graphics on the map you want to join. Click Drawing on the Draw toolbar, point to Graphic Operations, and click the method you want to use. The graphics are joined.”

This did not work. After pointing to “Graphic Operations”, the Methods, including “Union” were not selectable.

Please help.

Thanks.

Answer: It sounds like you want to do what we call “merge” – this will make the two features one feature. I am providing you steps below with links to online help.

1) You first need to add the Editor toolbar to your ArcMap session.

2) After adding your feature class to ArcMap, start the edit session.

3) Select the polygons you want to merge (hold the Shift key while selecting the features so that you can select more than one), click the drop down arrow next to “Editor” on the Editor toolbar and click Merge.

4) Save your edits.

This will merge your two non-contiguous parcels into one.  In the process of merging, you will be asked to select the polygon that has the attributes that you want to assign to the newly merged feature.

Hope this helps!

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