An overview of the Joins and Relates toolset

The Joins and Relates toolset contains tools that add or remove joins between layers or table views. Joins made with the Add Join tool or the Add Spatial Join tool or relates made with the Add Relate tool are temporary and do not permanently transfer the fields between tables. To preserve the join or relate between sessions, you can create a relationship using the tools in the Relationship Classes toolset.

Tools in the Joins and Relates toolset

Tool	Description
Add Join	Joins a layer to another layer or table based on a common field. Feature layers, table views, and raster layers with a raster attribute table are supported.
Add Relate	Relates a layer to another layer or table based on a field value. Feature layers, table views, and raster layers with a raster attribute table are supported.
Add Spatial Join	Joins attributes from one feature to another based on the spatial relationship. The target features and the joined attributes from the join features will be joined. The join is temporary.
Join Field	Permanently joins the contents of a table to another table based on a common attribute field. The input table is updated to contain the fields from the join table. You can select which fields from the join table will be added to the input table.
Remove Join	Removes a join from a feature layer or table view.
Remove Relate	Removes a relate from a feature layer or a table view.
Validate Join	Validates a join between two layers or tables to determine if the layers or tables have valid field names and Object ID fields, if the join produces matching records, if the join is a one-to-one or one-to-many join, and other properties of the join.