Zip code tabulation areas are designed to approximate the location of U.S. Postal zip codes. ZCTAs are approximations of mailing ZIP Codes and should not be confused with them. There multiple common reasons why someone's ZIP Code may not match the ZCTA code, and these need to be considered. Based on the January 2000 list of ZIP Codes from the USPS's Delivery Type File, the ZCTA delineation process excluded 10,068 ZIP Codes in the United States and Puerto Rico. In order for others to use the information in the Census MAF/TIGER database in a geographic information system (GIS) or for other geographic applications, the Census Bureau releases to the public extracts of the database in the form of TIGER/Line Shapefiles.
| Name | Description | |
| OBJECTID | Internal feature number. | |
| Shape | Feature geometry. | |
| ZIPCODE | Zip Code Area approximated | |
| ZIP5 | ||
| Shape.area | ||
| Shape.len |