Remove and replace characters from a field in an attribute table

Summary

The instructions provided describe how to remove and replace characters from a field in an attribute table using the Field Calculator in ArcMap. In this example, the hyphen character ( - ) is replaced and removed to provide better readability.

Procedure

1. Open ArcMap.
2. Right-click the selected layer in Table Of Contents, and select Open Attribute Table.

3. Start an edit session via the Editor toolbar for the selected layer.

4. Right-click the field, and select Field Calculator....

5. In Field Calculator, click the Python parser, and double-click the desired field name to insert the field name in the codeblock.
6. Click the String radio button, and in the Functions list, click .replace().
7. Within the bracket in .replace(), type "-"," " to replace hyphens with a space, as shown below.

Code:
 ![FieldName]!.replace("-"," ") 

8. Click OK. The hyphens are removed.

9. In the Editor toolbar, select Stop Editing and click Save Edits to save the changes.