Export list of geographic coordinates to Google Earth, from Excel, with image and rich text

This is an example of how Excel can send content to Google Earth. The case is this:

We have a list of coordinates in decimal geographic format (lat / lon). We want to send to Google Earth, and we want it to show the code of the point of interest, a text in bold, a descriptive text, a photograph of the point and a hyperlink to open a page on the Internet.

Here's the example of what we hope to show by clicking on the dot:

The code is: XL-3458

The length:

-103.377499

Latitude:

20.654443

And this is what we hope to see:

Although the template will be uploaded, the spirit of the article is to explain how to do it on your own.

What we occupy is to create the html tags in separate columns to be able to concatenate: The code for this would be:

Central plaza
Mr. Joaquín Gómez Father's house, where the National University initially existed and is now restored as a museum protected by the National Institute of Anthropology

<img src=”http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Casas_actiopan.jpg/800px-Casas_actiopan.jpg”width=”144”height=”168“>

<a href=”http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Casas_actiopan.jpg“>View website

All labels that are to indicate that it is a separate line, closing with a which is equivalent to an Enter.

Then, the is a label to indicate that this text is in bold, of course closing it with a

Im is a tag for the image, which carries properties such as the width (width), height (height) and the address where the image is (src)

Finally there is the label for the hyperlink, which opens with

The marked in purple is content that would change with each image, so we will be interested then to leave it in cells.

Without much turn, you can see then that the concatenate function would be summed up to something like this:

= CONCATENATE(,CELL,,CELL,,CELL,<img src=”,CELL,”width=”,CELL,”height=”,CELL,“><a href=”,CELL,“>,CELL,)

Which implies, that we will occupy 8 columns to store all the data that we want to show. Although in the case of those that have labels that use the = symbol and double quotes, it is complicated for us because in Excel the first indicates a function and the second is used to separate textual content. This is solved by placing those contents in separate cells as if they were text.

Finally we have this:

And to send to Google Earth I have placed a button that generates the file.  There you specify the path where the file is and the name we expect to have the description of the kml when it is displayed in the left panel.

The template has some mouse over cell prompts to suggest how the data should be entered. In general it tends to have a problem when macros are not enabled and when the path where the file is being created is not writable.

There we have it, you can do search by code in the sidebar of Google Earth, and clicking on the point is shown as we expected.

Download example kml

It requires a symbolic contribution for the download, which you can do with Paypal or credit card.

It is symbolic if one considers the utility it provides and the ease with which it can be acquired.

Learn how to make this and other templates in the Excel-CAD-GIS cheat course.

Common problems

It may happen that, when using the application, one of the following incidents may appear:

Error 75 - File path.

This happens because the path that has been defined where the kml file is to be saved is not accessible or there are no permissions for this action.

Ideally, you should put a path on disk D, which has fewer restrictions than disk C usually has. Example:

D: \

The points are coming out at the North Pole.

This usually happens, because in our windows, as indicated in the instruction for the template to work, the regional configuration must be established in the regional panel:

• -Point, for decimals separator
• -Coma, for thousands separator
• -Coma, for listings separator

So, a data such as: One thousand seven hundred and eighty meters with twelve centimeters should be seen as 1,780.12

The image shows how this configuration is done.

This is another image that shows the configuration in the control panel.

Once the change is made, the file is generated again and then, the points will appear where it corresponds in Google Earth.

If you have a question, write to the support email editor@geofumadas.com. It always indicates the version of windows you are using.