Simple join not working

Try saving the excel spreadsheet as a CSV, then opening it in ArcMap and exporting it to a DBF. Then you should be able to perform joins and field calculations. Also, check the length of your fields in the spreadsheet- they cannot be too long.

In case anyone stumbles on this, here's my experience with a similar problem. Short answer: the problem was with my shapefile and not my table. Using an earlier version of the shapefile cleared up the problem.

I was doing everything right and getting no matches in a table join. I reformatted my table 10 different ways and nothing worked. Then I tried to join a dummy table - 10 rows and 2 fields that I knew should match. I still got not matches. This made me think that the problem was with my shapefile and not the table. I tried an earlier version of the shapefile with the same table and it worked as expected. Somehow I corrupted the shapefile. I have no idea how, but using an earlier version fixed it.

If on the Join Data window (after right-clicking feature > selecting Join) the drop down box for "2. Choose the table to join..." does not show the spreadsheet you have added then my guess is you have more than one dataframe and you have added the spreadsheet to the wrong frame. Therefore, you are not seeing the spreadsheet show up in the Join Data drop down.

Four things need to be in place for a join to be successful.

1. The fields your using to join, both have to be the same format, i.e. string or number. The field names don't matter but the format does.
2. The data should be in the same case if string, i.e. Upper, Lower, or Proper. Because Name, NAME, and name are not the same in a join.
3. Leading and trailing spaces, very easy to add by mistake, use trim to remove them.
4. Make sure the join field is not populated by a excel formula, it needs real vlaues.

Most of the time that works, if all else fails try the CSV route and this will rule out any XLS, XLSX issues.

I had the same issue, the formatting fixed my issue like a charm! Although ArcMap layer has a column with all numbers it was defined as a 'String' so I had to change my Excel file columns from the 'number' format to 'text' and the join worked. Many thanks Bill Chappel, above.

This happened to me when I changed the name of the shapefile in the Table of Contents. Removing the file and then adding back with the original name fixed the problem.