OK, I have a GIGANTIC database of addresses from road trips, art sites and more (5000+). I want to get this info to My Maps on Google Maps, (and eventually my Garmin) so I can plan trips more easily without reinventing the wheel.
Because there is so muc to sort through, it feels overwhelming, so I am breaking the info into bite-sized pieces - listings by states.
1 - Export your date from the original source (address book, filemaker database, whatever) to an Excel spreadsheet.
2- Create categories of Name, Address, City, State, Zip, phone and additional info if you wish) BE SURE TO CREATE FIELD HEADERS
3- Go to BatchGeoCode (free) and copy and paste your data into the box (include the headers). Validate the source (step 3 on their site), select the proper location field to match your field headers, (step 4) then click on Run Geocoder (step 5 on their site)
4 - Copy the data in their step 6 and paste back into your spreadsheet. I like to rename the bg_lat and bg_long to just longitude and latitude
5 - You are going to want to reduce the info into 4 groups/headings: Name, Description, Latitude, and Longitude. Because I want my Google map to show the addresses, not just a point, I merge the address cells and any additional data. This is a tedious step, but I am a bit of a freak.
Save as an .xls file.
6 - Now you are going to use another great free resource, GPS Visualizer. Click on "Google Earth KML"
7 - Upload your xls file, and click on Create KML file:
8 - Open up Google maps and create a new map. Click on Import, and chose your KML file.
Tada! (I go in and color code the sites, to help me determine what is what)
To export your Google map to your Garmin, please read the next Getting it to Your Garmin.
1 comments:
A couple of thoughts: first, GPS Visualizer has a batch geocoder of its own (http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocoder/), which might simplify things somewhat. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with batchgeocode.com's utility, if you're comfortable with that.
Second, are you colorizing your points after you've brought them into Google Earth? That's a lot more work than simply adding a "color" column to your spreadsheet, which GPS Visualizer will recognize.
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