Removing points that fall inside a polygon

You have several options if you want to delete points that are within a polygon.

Selecting and deleting features while editing

If you have only a few points, you can simply select them and delete them while editing.

1. Use Select By Location to select those features from the points layer that intersect the polygon layer.
2. If you instead want to delete the points that are outside the polygon, right-click the layer, point to Selection, then click Switch Selection.
3. Press the DELETE key.

Using the Erase Point geoprocessing tool

If you have many points or multipoint features, use the Erase Point geoprocessing tool to remove the points that are either inside or outside a polygon. This tool is most useful if you have a large dataset of multipoint features that you want to clip without making a new output feature class. For example, use the tool when you have a lidar dataset containing mass points stored as multipoint features and want to remove the points that are outside your area of interest (outside a polygon) or want to remove the points that are on water bodies (inside a polygon).