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GIS Salesman There once was a super GIS salesman that travelled the world with a great ‘it can do everything’ GIS demo (but the real stuff was vapourware). He sold it to lonely GISers and made lots of money. One day while dashing through an airport on his way to clinch another mega deal he dropped dead of a heart attack. At the gates of Heaven he was judged. He had lived a borderline life and was given the option of Heaven or Hell. He could look into the doors of each and choose. As he opened the door to Heaven, wonderful harp music played, be saw people floating on clouds and all was bright and white. Next he opened the doors to Hell and saw people drinking beer and dancing to rock and roil music. Everyone was partying. It was just like his first year at college. When he met with his Maker again, he said: ‘Heaven is great and wonderful, but the other is more my style’. ‘Think carefully’, he was told, but the other was his wish. As the doors of Hell opened for him, the intense heat hit him and he was pulled in. He stood before the Devil and saw pain and sorrow everywhere. He shouted at the Devil: ‘Where is the party and beer?’ ‘The Devil laughed: ‘That was the demo, this is the real thing’. Consultant Once upon a time there was a sheepherder tending his sheep at the edge of a country road in rural Wyoming. A brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee screeched to a halt next to him. The driver, a young man dressed in a Brioni suit, Cerrutti shoes, Ray-Ban glasses, Jovial Swiss wristwatch and a BHS tie, jumped out and asked the herder “If I guess how many sheep you have, will you give me one of them?” The herder looked at the young man, then looked at the sprawling herd of grazing sheep and said “Okay.” The young man parked the SUV, connected his notebook and wireless modem, entered a NASA site, scanned the ground using satellite imagry and a GPS, opened a database and 60 Excel tables filled with algorithms, then printed a 150-page report on his high-tech mini-printer. He turned to the herder and said “You have exactly 1,586 sheep here.” The herder answered “Say, you are right. Pick out a sheep.”The young man took one of the animals and put it in the back of his vehicle. As he was preparing to drive away, the herder looked at him and asked “Now, if I guess your profession, will you pay me back in kind?” The young man answered “Sure.” The herder said immediately “You are a consultant.” “Exactly! How did you know?” asked the young man. “Very simple,” replied the herder. “First you came here without being invited. Secondly, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already knew. Thirdly, you do not understand anything about my business, and I’d really like to have my dog back.”

if i am not mistaken, try setting the coordinate display in google earth to UTM (well the third option ,aside from decdegrees and degminsec) before converting. If it does not work do not fret, as long as you have a GCS, you can always project to a PCS via ArcGIS toolbox: Data Management > Projections and Transformations > Project. I believe you can project it to a PCS. Remember that a GCS is a 3D surface, and a PCS is a 2D surface which came from a 3D surface, hence the term projected. As a side note, there is no problem if you are working with datasets with the same DATUM (That is for example,all datasets are in WGS84). Just make sure you also have on-the-fly projection enabled. hope this helps =)