An overview of the Joins toolset

Tools in the Joins toolset create a join between a layer and a table view. Joins made with the Add Join tool are temporary and last only for the duration of a session. If you need to preserve the join between sessions, you can create a relationship using the tools in the Relationship Classes toolset.

Tool	Description
Add Join	Joins a layer to another layer or table (where 'layer' is a feature layer, table view, or raster layer with a raster attribute table) based on a common field.
Remove Join	Removes a join from a feature layer or table view.
Join Field	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.

Tools in the Joins toolset