Select null values from a field using Select By Attributes in ArcGIS Pro

Summary

The Select By Attributes tool is particularly useful when choosing values, including nulls, from a field in an attribute table. By providing a query expression, the tool selects the features with the matching criteria.

The attribute table below shows the null values in the ‘Search status’ field are interspersed with different values. Select by Attributes can accurately select only the null values, which speeds up the search, in contrast to selecting the values manually.

This article provides the workflow to select null values from the field using the 'is null' query attribute in the Select By Attributes tool in ArcGIS Pro.

Procedure

1. Launch ArcGIS Pro, and open the project.
2. On the top ribbon, click the Map tab.
3. In the Selection group, click Select By Attributes to open the Select By Attributes dialog box.

4. Configure the Select By Attributes dialog box as follows:
   1. Select the feature layer from the Input Rows drop-down list. In this example, the Trails layer is selected.
   2. Select New selection from the drop-down list of the Selection type field.
   3. Click New expression to open the query builder.

5. In the query builder, depending on the query mode, build the queries to select the null values.

Note: The query builder opens in the Clause mode by default. To open it in SQL mode, toggle SQL  on. Refer to ArcGIS Pro: Query builder for more information.

For the Clause mode:

1. Click the drop-down arrow, and select the field from the drop-down. In this example, Trailheads is selected.
2. Select is null from the drop-down list.

For the SQL mode, insert:

<Field> IS NULL

6. Click the Verify the SQL expression is valid icon to validate the query expression, and click OK. In this example, the expression in the SQL mode is validated.

The attribute table shows the null values from the ‘Search status’ field selected using Select By Attributes in ArcGIS Pro.