As a visual learner I sometimes struggle to translate rows/columns of data into meaningful information. Graphs, charts and other means of visually reporting data are a huge help to me.
I’ve used geotagging in Google Earth before with good results. At one time I needed a way to better market an event and used addresses from attendees to map about 15% of my total attendance. This gave me a quick snapshot of where to market based on attendance patterns.
Most recently I needed to visually gauge the schools in Northern PA and plan some of my upcoming trips. I wanted to quickly view groups of districts and easily see where I needed to be and where I had already been. I’ll quickly outline how I tackled the process, you can then apply the method to your own needs. If you are aware of a more streamlined process please let me know.
As a brief aside; this process could be much easier if Google would include the features of Google Earth Pro. Google, who have made their mark as a creator and promoter of open-source solutions, took the feature that is most useful to its users and made it part of the paid only version. If you would like to save the time and effort of the following tutorial simply go to www.thepiratebay.org or www.mininova.org and pirate the Pro version.
Step 1: Prepare your database
You will need a file that contains the street addresses and description of your points of interest (POI). For this project let’s use this pre-made Excel spreadsheet (links to my dropbox account since the original file requires winrar to unzip). The original spreadsheet comes from ExceltoKML which we will return to later in the project.
Step 2: Geotag your addresses
Geotagging is the process of translating a street/city/state/zip into a lattitude and longitude. I’ve experimented with several sites but found the highest accuracy and best results with the one below. The only drawback to this site is that it adds an additional step once we get back into Excel.
www.stevemorse.com – Copy the full address of your POIs into the box on the website and click “Process”.You will find that it returns the lattitude and longitude together. This means that when you paste the results back into Excel they will both be together in the same cell.
No problem! Highlight all your Excel cells that now have the lattitude and longitude. Click on “Data” on your toolbar and then select “Text to Columns.” This will bring up an option box. Make sure that “Delimited” is selected and then click next. On the following page uncheck “Tab” and make sure that “Comma” is selected. Click “Next” and if the preview looks good you may click “Finish.”
Step 3: Convert to KML
The free version of Google Earth doesn’t allow you to simply open up an Excel file. This means that we must now translate our geocoded data into a file type that Google Earth can read, a KML.
Go to ExceltoKML. Before we code the data we have a few options. If you scroll down the page you will see descriptions of the various fields in our Excel spreadsheet. At this point we can choose which icons we would like for each address. If you have many addresses I would encourage you to mark “TRUE” in the field that says “hide name until mouseover” This will simply put an icon on the map and only show the text description when you mouse over the icon. This cleans up the map a little if it is crowded.
At this point you can save multiple versions of your Excel file. For example: I might want a map that only has two icons. One for schools that I’ve visited this year and one for schools that I haven’t. Or I may want a map that has has a different icon based on which software solution the district is using. This is based entirely on your project needs. You can always go back and edit this file.
Once you have chosen your options you return to the ExceltoKML site and click the “Browse” button to find your file. Once found, click “View on Google Earth” which will give you the option to save the file to your pc. Do this, and make note of where your downloads are stored. Now you have a KML file that you can open in Google Earth anytime.
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