My problem is as follows:
I imported a number of shapefiles from a .gpx-file from a gps-device. Each shapefile contains a number of waypoints. For the study I am doing, I need to give all of them unique ID's. I simply selected each shapefile, toggled the editing-switch and changed the name in the attribute table's name-column. Though for some reason, I cannot toggle editing of two of the 20 shapefiles. All of them have the same coordinate system as the project, so I don't understand why I cannot find the solution.
I am still in the rookie-phase of using GIS, so I might have overlooked some obvious solution. I hope someone here can help me.
Best Answer
If you import from gpx, the layers are still bound to the gpx file. These are very restricted in editing capabilities, because gpx does not allow all that you can do with shapefiles.
You have to save the layer to "ESRI Shapefile" format, add that to the canvas, and delete the gpx layer from canvas.
Adiitionally, some shapefiles can not be edited if you have set a filter on the data.
By the way, current version of QGIS is 2.4. Some features have improved a lot since 1.8