Formatting your spreadsheet

Step by step guide to formatting your spreadsheet for geocoding

1. DO upload only spreadsheets in a supported file format

   The file needs to be a format we support.

   Good: addresses.xlsx

   Not Good: addresses.pdf

   Not Good: addresses.doc

   We support the following file types: .csv, .ods, .tsv, .txt, .xls, .xlsx

2. DO put the data in the first sheet

   If you are using a software like Excel where you can have multiple "sheets", please put the data you want geocoded in the first sheet.

3. DO add a header row

   Use the first row of the file to tell us what the columns mean so we don't have to guess.

   Good:

   	A	B	C
   1	id	latitude	longitude
   2	123	52.5432379	13.4142133
   3	456	51.522664	-0.102534

   Not Good:

   	A	B	C
   1	123	52.5432379	13.4142133
   2	456	51.522664	-0.102534

   Good:

   	A	B
   1	id	address
   2	123	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin, Germany
   3	456	82 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1M 5RF, United Kingdom

   Not Good:

   	A	B
   1	123	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin, Germany
   2	456	82 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1M 5RF, United Kingdom

4. DO NOT send us personal or confidential data in your file

   Your file is sent to us for processing, so only include what is actually needed to geocode each row.
   See our GDPR / data protection page for more on how we handle data.

   Not Good:

   	A	B	C
   1	employee name	salary	address
   2	Alice	65000	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin, Germany
   3	Bob	50000	82 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1M 5RF, United Kingdom

   Good:

   	A	B
   1	id	address
   2	123	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin, Germany
   3	456	82 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1M 5RF, United Kingdom

5. DO ensure your file obeys the row limits

   • Free trial accounts can geocode spreadsheets of up to 100 rows.
   • Subscription customers can geocode spreadsheets up to 10,000 rows.
   • One-time plan customers can geocode spreadsheets up to the number of requests the have remaining or 10,000 rows.

   If your file exceeds the row limits, the upload will be rejected rather than silently processing only part of the file.

6. DO ensure your file obeys the file size limits

   Files can be at most 10 MB.

   If your file exceeds the file size limits, the upload will be rejected rather than silently processing only part of the file.

7. DO put the address in a single column

   When forward geocoding, ideally you should put the entire address in a single column to reduce the chance we make a mistake when assembling the address pieces.

   Good:

   	A	B
   1	id	address
   2	123	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin, Germany
   3	456	82 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1M 5RF, United Kingdom

   Less Good:

   	A	B	C	D	E
   1	id	street	postcode	city	country
   2	123	Pappelallee 78/79	10437	Berlin	Germany
   3	456	82 Clerkenwell Road	EC1M 5RF	London	United Kingdom

8. DO follow our advice for formatting the address

   We do much better if you can follow our query formatting guidelines, for example things like telling us which country the address is in.

   Good:

   	A	B
   1	id	address
   2	123	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin, Germany
   3	456	82 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1M 5RF, United Kingdom

   Not Good:

   	A	B
   1	id	address
   2	123	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437
   3	456	123 Main St, 81003

9. DO put coordinates in separate columns and format them correctly

   When reverse geocoding, you should have one column for latitude, and one column for longitude. The values should be in decimal format.

   Watch out for spreadsheet software silently mangling coordinates: Excel in particular can convert a long decimal like 13.4142133 into scientific notation 1.34E+01 if the column is formatted as "General"

   Some locales use a comma rather than a period as the decimal separator, which can corrupt the column entirely when exported to CSV. Before uploading, format the latitude/longitude columns as plain "Number" (with enough decimal places) or "Text",

   Spot-check a few rows after saving to confirm nothing was rounded or reformatted.

   Good:

   	A	B	C
   1	id	latitude	longitude
   2	123	52.5432379	13.4142133
   3	456	51.5226742	-0.1025238

   Not Good:

   	A	B
   1	id	coordinates
   2	123	52.5432379, 13.4142133
   3	456	51.5226742, -0.1025238

   Not Good:

   	A	B	C
   1	id	latitude	longitude
   2	123	52° 32' 35.65644'' N	13° 24' 51.16788'' E
   3	456	51° 31' 21.62712'' N	0° 6' 9.08568'' E

10. DO remove duplicate rows

    Each row counts as an API request.

    Good:

    	A	B
    1	id	address
    2	123	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin, Germany

    Not Good:

    	A	B
    1	id	address
    2	123	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin, Germany
    3	456	82 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1M 5RF, United Kingdom
    4	123	Pappelallee 78/79, 10437 Berlin, Germany

11. DO save your file as UTF-8 if it contains non-ASCII characters

    If your addresses include accented characters, umlauts, or non-Latin scripts, make sure you export/save the file as UTF-8.

    Some spreadsheet software defaults to a different encoding when saving as CSV, which can silently corrupt those characters, turning input like München into München.