Creating Simple Maps with Microsoft Excel

Wednesday October 04th 2000
Filed Under Features 

Got MS Excel? Need a simple map? A little known tool in Microsoft’s Excel is the ability to create simple maps from tabular data. You can create simple chloropeth, chart and dot density maps using data organized by country, state or region.

To get started

Create or load in an MS Excel compatible file. Compatible files (i.e. files that MS Excel can load in and properly place within columns and rows) include dbase (*.dbf), comma delineated (these are text files with the column values separated by commas and the row values separated by returns), as well as importable files from other spreadsheet programs. For a complete list of files that Excel can open check the descriptions in the “file types:” drop down in the open file GUI.

Once you have loaded in or created the data you want to map, you will need to select the columns containing the data you want to map. The easiest way is to simply select all the columns (you select the actual columns to work with later on). To select the rows click on the header cells and drag your mouse across the columns until all columns you want have been highlighted. Make sure you include the column containing the names of the countries, states or cities that you are interested in mapping.

Creating the Map

Now you are ready to start mapping. With the data columns still selected go to Insert à Map… Your cursor will change to a crossbar. Go to the part of the worksheet where you want to display the map. With your mouse, create the mapping area by clicking the upper left-hand corner of the intended map and dragging towards the lower right-hand corner and then release the mouse. MS Excel will then try to match the boundary names with existing map templates. If it can’t match it or finds more than one match a GUI will pop-up listing choices to select from.

Once you’ve selected your map template MS Excel will then attempt to match the boundary names with the boundary names attached to the template. If it comes across an unmatched name it will prompt you with a GUI listing all the boundary names from the template that you can match the unknown name to. If the name isn’t available in the list you can choose to discard that name and its associated values.

Once all the data issues have been resolved Excel creates a map using the data name column and the next immediate column. The default map is a graduate symbol map.





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    Comments

    7 Responses to “Creating Simple Maps with Microsoft Excel”

    1. mg on September 25th, 2007 3:13 pm

      Is there anything available like this for WinXP and MacOS?

    2. Ned Kellogg on October 24th, 2007 5:55 am

      Does this only work with Vista and/or Office 2007?

    3. geofumadas » Blog Archive » Geofumadas al vuelo Diciembre 2007 on December 13th, 2007 10:29 pm

      [...] Gis Lounge Creando mapas con excel [...]

    4. denis jaubert on December 19th, 2007 7:08 am

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    5. juraj on December 19th, 2007 1:14 pm

      Can anyone pls help me ?

      I need to create a “cheapness map” with MS Excel.

      How does one do dahat ?

    6. Mark Smith on January 2nd, 2008 2:24 pm

      Note - this feature existed in an old version of Excel, and is not present in Office 2003, or Office 2007.

      If you want to plot excel data on a map, my company has a tool that gives you free read-only maps of your Excel data.

    7. Peter on September 23rd, 2008 11:24 am

      Microsoft Map, which is a feature of Excel 2000 that creates, displays and enables you to analyze information by geographical region, is not available with Microsoft Excel 2002 and later. To create maps that can be used with data in Microsoft Excel 2002 or later, you can use a mapping program, such as Microsoft MapPoint.

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