Excel to KML Converter: Spreadsheet into Google Earth

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How to use this tool

Drop an .xlsx file above. The first worksheet is read, the coordinate columns are found automatically, everything is drawn so you can check it, and Convert to KML gives you a file that opens in Google Earth by double clicking.

If you want to see the map without producing a file, the Excel to Map does the same reading and stops there. If your data is a .csv rather than a spreadsheet, use the CSV to KML Converter.

What your spreadsheet needs

Two columns it can recognise as coordinates, and values that are actually degrees. Any of latitude, lat, y or northing works for the latitude, and any of longitude, lon, lng, long, x or easting for the longitude, in any case or spacing.

If none of the names match, it falls back to looking at the values and picks the columns whose numbers fall inside the range of degrees. It tells you which two it chose, because that is a guess and you should check it.

Everything else becomes ExtendedData, which is the balloon content in Google Earth. That is the point of converting rather than just plotting: your depths, dates, contractors and asset numbers arrive as something a person can click on.

What stops the conversion

Values outside the range of degrees. A column reading 4096742 is not a latitude in any coordinate system, it is metres on a projected grid, and there are hundreds of grids. Rather than plotting your sites in the wrong country, the tool stops and says so. Convert to decimal degrees first, and the Coordinate Converter, latitude and longitude to UTM will do it.

The other stopper is subtler. If the latitude column holds values beyond 90, the columns have been swapped somewhere, probably when somebody pasted a pair written the way people say it aloud. The range check catches that too.

A worked check you can repeat on paper

Before you convert, check one row by hand. It takes seconds and it catches both failures.

• Is the latitude between minus 90 and 90? Latitude runs pole to pole and stops.
• Is the longitude between minus 180 and 180?
• Does the pair land where you expect? A negative longitude is west of Greenwich and a negative latitude is south of the equator.

Now check the arithmetic of what will come out. Count your columns. Two become the Point. If one is called name, it becomes the placemark label. Everything remaining becomes a Data element inside ExtendedData, so a nine column spreadsheet with a name column produces six Data elements per placemark.

Count them in the output and you have confirmed the conversion dropped nothing, in about a minute, without any tools beyond a text editor.

Mistakes that catch people out

Data on the second tab. Only the first worksheet is read, which is worth knowing before concluding the file is broken.

A title row above the header. Merged cells, logos and report titles push the real header down, and the tool expects it first. Delete everything above it.

Coordinates stored as text with a degree symbol or a direction letter. A cell reading 37.0 N is text, not a number. Strip it to a plain signed number.

Degrees, minutes and seconds in one cell. Convert to decimal degrees first.

Long column names. They travel into the balloon and they travel further if this data ever becomes a shapefile, where they are cut to ten characters.

Related Calculators and Reference

A spreadsheet is where most of this data starts.

• Excel to Map for reading and checking the spreadsheet without producing a file.
• CSV to KML Converter for the same conversion starting from a .csv.
• CSV to Shapefile Converter for sending the same table into GIS as a shapefile instead.
• KML and KMZ Viewer for opening the KML you just made.
• Coordinate Converter, latitude and longitude to UTM for converting eastings and northings into the degrees this tool needs.
• The Open Geospatial Consortium KML standard is the authority on ExtendedData, where your columns end up.