I really hate discovering silly problems in ArcGIS, especially as ESRI's documentation is not the easiest stuff in the world to use. Many of the solutions are things I discover by inference from the documentation. Here's this week's two:

Problem: I would like to Join a Table to a Shapefile / Layer. (Specifically, I'd like to Join a table that has tax parcel id / address / owner address records, exported from the City Assesor's database, to the County's parcel Layer.) Obviously, I right-click the Layer, and use "Joins and Relates -> Join..." I receive no error message, and the Layer has all of the fields from the Table included in it. With no data. Just blank fields.

Solution: You can't Join a Table that has spaces in the filename. Edit the Table's filename, then run the Join.

Problem: I would like to Select By Attributes records from my now successfully Joined Layer. (Specifically, I'd like to Select all those records where the Property Address matches the Owner Address - i.e. highlight owner occupied parcels.) I set up my query accordingly. ArcMap crashes.

Solution: ArcMap apparently doesn't want to perform a Select By Attributes on a Layer with a Join. Which is strange - why would I join fields to a layer if I didn't immediately want to, you know, use those fields. The solution: take that Layer you just Joined the table to, right-click, "Export Data". That's right, you have to make an entirely new Layer, rather than just using the joint layer you've got.

Sigh.