Excel and CSV to KML Converter

Getting coordinates from Excel into Google Earth

Survey results, field inventories and site lists usually live in an Excel sheet. Google Earth and Google My Maps do not read that sheet directly; the points first need to be converted to KML. This tool turns every row of your table into a KML point, shows the columns you pick as a table in the description balloon and, if you want, joins the points in order into a line or a closed polygon.

How to use it

1. Choose an Excel or CSV file, or copy the cells and paste them into the text box.
2. Pick the coordinate type. For TM, UTM and ED50, set the zone (central meridian), then check the coordinate columns.
3. Choose the name column and the columns for the description. Set the colour, icon and size; you can colour the points by a column or split them into folders.
4. For ordered points such as parcel corners, set the geometry to "closed polygon". With a folder column selected, each parcel becomes its own polygon.
5. Press Create KML, check the result on the map and download it as KML, KMZ or GeoJSON.

Supported coordinate formats

Latitude and longitude can be decimal degrees (40.9719 or 40,9719) or degrees, minutes and seconds: 40°58'43.6"N, 40 58 43.6, 40:58:43.6 and 40°58.727' are all read. South and west (S, W) or a minus sign make the value negative. If latitude and longitude share one cell, as in "40.9719, 27.5153" copied from Google Maps, use the "one column" option. Projected values may use a decimal comma and thousands separators (4.538.900,00).

Opening the file in Google Earth Pro

Choose File, then Open, and select the downloaded KML or KMZ file. The data appears under Temporary Places; to keep it, right-click the folder and save it to My Places. In Google Earth on the web, files can be imported from the Projects panel.

Opening the file in Google My Maps

Create a new map, click Import under the layer and select the KML or KMZ file. My Maps may replace the icon colours with its own styles; columns written as ExtendedData show up as separate fields in the attribute table.

Common mistakes with projected coordinates

• Easting and northing order: surveyors in Turkey and several other countries call the easting Y and the northing X, the opposite of the usual maths convention. The easting has 6 digits (around 500 000) and the northing usually 7. The tool warns you when the order looks reversed.
• Zone: an easting near 500 000 exists in every zone, so the zone cannot be read from the coordinates. Take it from the survey report or map sheet. With the wrong zone the points shift by the width of a zone, around 250 km for 3° zones at 40° latitude.
• Datum: older Turkish map sheets use ED50. The same point has coordinates about 180-200 m apart in ED50 and in TUREF, mostly in the northing.
• Latitude and longitude: if a latitude looks like a longitude for your area, the columns are swapped.

Data and method

Between ED50 and WGS 84 the tool uses EPSG:1784 (ED50 to WGS 84 (30)), defined for Turkey, which EPSG lists with an accuracy of about 2 m. No datum shift is applied between TUREF and WGS 84. Areas are computed on the WGS 84 ellipsoid with an equal-area projection centred on the polygon; perimeters and lengths use the Vincenty method. When the input is TM or UTM, the grid area is given as well. KML coordinates are written in the longitude, latitude order that the standard requires. Icons point to Google's standard icon addresses, so Google Earth loads them from there when the file is opened.

Coordinates are transformed with proj4js 2.9.0 (MIT), Excel files are read with SheetJS 0.18.5 (Apache-2.0), CSV with Papa Parse 5.4.1 (MIT) and KMZ files are built with JSZip 3.10.1 (MIT). Map basemaps come from OpenStreetMap contributors and Esri. Open-source libraries used and their licences: Data Sources.

For larger projects

If your team collects field data regularly and wants it on a map without passing through spreadsheets, you can read about our work on the Rodosto Teknoloji website or reach us through the contact page.