An overview of the Indexes toolset

The Indexes toolset provides tools that create and remove indexes.

ArcGIS uses indexes to quickly locate data. It uses attribute indexes to locate records that match an attribute query, and it uses spatial indexes to locate features that match a spatial query.

Tool	Description
Add Attribute Index	Adds an attribute index to an existing table, feature class, shapefile, coverage, or attributed relationship class.
Add Spatial Index	Adds a spatial index to a shapefile, file geodatabase, or enterprise geodatabase feature class. Use this tool to either add a spatial index to a shapefile or feature class that does not already have one or to re-create an existing spatial index.
Remove Attribute Index	This tool deletes an attribute index from an existing table, feature class, shapefile, coverage, or attributed relationship class.
Remove Spatial Index	Deletes the spatial index from a shapefile, file geodatabase feature class, or an ArcSDE feature class. The spatial index cannot be deleted from a personal geodatabase feature class.

Tools in the Indexes toolset