KML to CSV Converter: Google Earth into a Spreadsheet
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Features in this file
| Name | Type | Folder | Vertices | Length | Area |
|---|
How to use this tool
Drop a .kml file above. Every placemark is listed in the table, and Convert to CSV gives you one row per feature, ready to open in Excel or load into a database.
If what you have is a .kmz, the KMZ to CSV Converter unzips it first. Everything else is identical.
Going this way flattens the geometry
A table has one row per feature. Geometry does not always fit in one row, and understanding what happens is the difference between using this output correctly and being surprised by it.
A point fits perfectly. One coordinate pair, one row, nothing lost.
A line does not. A recorded track or a road might hold two hundred coordinate pairs, and a single row cannot carry them. So the row gets a representative coordinate, taken from the middle of the line, along with the vertex count and the measured length. The shape itself is gone.
A polygon is the same. One row gets a representative coordinate near the centre, the vertex count and the measured area. The boundary is not in the table.
That is the correct behaviour for a table, and it means the CSV is a summary rather than a copy. If you need the shapes afterwards, keep the original file. A CSV produced this way cannot be converted back into the same polygons.
What the columns are
The output has eight columns: name, type, folder, vertices, length_m, area_m2, longitude and latitude.
The folder column is worth pointing out, because it preserves something people expect to lose. A KML organises placemarks into folders, often by phase, contractor or survey date, and that structure carries meaning. It is written as a full path, so a placemark inside Boreholes inside Site Survey reads Site Survey / Boreholes. Nothing else in a flat table records that.
Length and area are in metres and square metres, measured properly rather than by treating degrees as a grid. Lengths use the Vincenty inverse solution on the WGS84 ellipsoid and areas use spherical excess, so a polygon spanning several degrees is measured correctly rather than being out by the cosine of its latitude.
A worked check you can repeat on paper
Load the sample and convert it. It has three placemarks, so you should get a header row plus three data rows, four lines in total.
Now look at what each row tells you. Each of the three is a point, so each has one vertex, an empty length and an empty area, and a longitude and latitude that are the point itself rather than a representative of anything.
Compare that with a file containing a line. The access track in some of the other samples on this site runs to 91.172 km across five vertices. In a CSV that becomes a single row reading five vertices, 91172 metres of length, and one coordinate pair from the middle of the track. You could not redraw the track from that row, and you could total the length of fifty such tracks in a spreadsheet in about four seconds.
Which is the point. Use this when the question is a number.
Mistakes that catch people out
Expecting to convert back. The CSV is a summary. Converting it back gives you points where your lines and polygons were.
Opening the CSV in Excel and losing the leading zeros. Asset numbers and site codes beginning with zero are helpfully turned into integers by Excel. Import as text rather than double clicking the file if that matters.
Assuming the coordinate is the centroid. It is a representative point chosen to sit on or near the feature, which for an awkward shape such as a crescent may not be inside the polygon at all. It is for locating the row, not for calculations.
Ignoring the folder column. It is often the only record of how the original map was organised, and it is the first thing people discard.
Forgetting the units. Lengths are metres and areas are square metres, not kilometres and hectares. Divide before you report.
Related Calculators and Reference
Turning a map into a table is usually the step before analysis rather than after it.
- KMZ to CSV Converter for the same conversion when what you were sent is a compressed .kmz.
- CSV to KML Converter for the return journey, building a map from a table.
- KML and KMZ Viewer for reading the KML first, including folder paths and attributes.
- Excel to Map for putting the resulting spreadsheet straight back onto a map.
- CSV Cleaner for XYZ data for cleaning the output before it goes into anything else.
- The RFC 4180, the CSV specification is the authority on how the resulting file is quoted and escaped.