Spreadsheets on a map · 5 min
Put a spreadsheet of addresses on a map
How to lay out the sheet, turn addresses into coordinates and catch the rows that went wrong.
Spreadsheets on a map
Two kinds of sheet
A sheet with latitude and longitude columns is ready to map: each row already says where it is.
A sheet with only addresses needs one step first, geocoding, which looks up each address and writes its coordinates next to it.
Lesson notes
Everything from the cards above, on one page to come back to.
Two kinds of sheet
A sheet with latitude and longitude columns is ready to map: each row already says where it is.
A sheet with only addresses needs one step first, geocoding, which looks up each address and writes its coordinates next to it.
Lay it out well
One row per place, one header row at the top, nothing merged. Keep the address in one full column, or split into street, town, postcode and country.
Always include the country, even when every row is in the same one. A search engine can't guess that “Cork” means Ireland and not one of the US towns.
name | address | town | postcode | country
Not every row will match
Some addresses are misspelt, new, or too vague. A good geocoder says how exact each match is: the building, the street, or only the town.
Sort by that column after a run. Fix the rows that only matched a town or did not match at all, then run just those again.
Doing it in MapGO
With a free account you can look up addresses one at a time, 10 a day. A whole CSV of addresses can be geocoded on a paid plan, counted against its daily address allowance.
A CSV that already has latitude and longitude columns opens on the workspace map when you are signed in, as points.
Questions
What is geocoding?
Turning an address into coordinates (latitude and longitude) so it can go on a map. The reverse, coordinates to an address, is reverse geocoding.
How do I map a list of addresses from Excel?
Lay out one address per row with the country included, save the sheet as CSV, geocode it, then open the result with its latitude and longitude columns on a map.