In order to ensure your spreadsheet is geocoded properly, you need to check three things before uploading:

1. Whether it has headers (such as "address" or "street" / "city" and so forth),

2. Formatting the addresses or coordinates consistently in either single column or multiple-column format, and

3. Including the country (if geocoding Canadian, Mexican, or UK addresses).

You can upload .xls, .xlsx, .csv, .tsv, and .zip files for geocoding. Download a sample list: .XLSX (shows all acceptable formats), .CSV (shows multiple-column format only).

When you upload a file, we only add columns. We won't delete any information from your spreadsheet. You can see an example geocoded file here.

Data quality

Your addresses do not need to be complete. They just need to be formatted the same way (i.e. either single column or multiple column) with any of the following combinations of data:

• Street address, city, state/province, ZIP/postal code + country

• Street address, ZIP/postal code + country

• Street address, city, state/province + country

• city, state/province + country

• ZIP/postal code + country

• Latitude/longitude

Spreadsheet Geocoding Formats

If you do not have data for a certain field (like postal code), you can just leave that blank.

Multiple-Column Format with Addresses

Single-Column Format with Addresses

Multiple-Column Format with Latitude/Longitude Coordinates

Note: your columns must be in Latitude | Longitude order.

Single-Column Format with Latitude/Longitude Coordinates

Note: your columns must be in Latitude | Longitude order.

1. Make sure your spreadsheet has headers

• You can name the header columns anything you like

• During the upload process, you'll get to choose which columns contain the address components.

2. Consistently format the addresses in one column or multiple columns

• You can put the address in a single column or split the address into separate columns

• The street number and name must be in the same column

• Addresses do not need to be complete; see here for a list of acceptable addresses

• If your spreadsheet includes addresses in both formats, you will need to split them into different lists, or concatenate the multi-column addresses into a single column prior to uploading

• If you choose to include ZIP Codes, use standard ZIP format instead of ZIP+4. We do not support ZIP+4 inputs.

Acceptable format: multiple-column Address data (street, city, state, ZIP) are split into multiple columns, and all addresses are formatted in the same way.

Acceptable format: single-column All of the address data is in a single cell, and all addresses are formatted the same way.

NOT acceptable: Mixed format Some addresses are formatted in a single cell, and some are spread across multiple cells. This would not process correctly. If your spreadsheet looks like this, you should split it into two spreadsheets. You can do this by filtering for addresses that have a blank second column and copy/pasting them into another spreadsheet.

3. If your spreadsheet includes addresses in Canada, Mexico, or UK, include a country column

• With Canadian, Mexican, and UK addresses, a Country column must be present

  • Canada: "Canada" exactly

  • Mexico: “MX” or "Mexico"

  • United Kingdom: UK, United Kingdom, GB, Scotland, England, Wales, or Northern Ireland

  • If no country is given, USA will be assumed

• Canada: For licensing reasons, note that you may input postal codes, but only partial postal codes will be returned in the results as the full postal codes are proprietary to Canada Post. If you include the full postal codes in your input, and the FSA (first three characters) match our internal data, the full postal code will be returned in the results for convenience. However, that postal code represents your original input, and has not been fully validated.

• For Mexican addresses, the street number should be placed before the street name (e.g. "462 Cuauhtemoc" rather than "Cuauhtemoc 462")

• Northern Ireland: Geocoding is only available at the postcode-level at this time.

Uploading Your Spreadsheet

You can upload your spreadsheet using our Spreadsheet Geocoding tool:

• Spreadsheet Geocoder (Self-Serve)

• Spreadsheet Geocoder (Enterprise)

You can also upload your spreadsheet directly through our API using our Lists endpoints. These endpoints allow you to create, check the status of, and delete spreadsheets programmatically.

You can also geocode spreadsheets via API. The Lists API requires some additional configuration, so please see our documentation first:

• Lists API Documentation (Self-Serve)

• Lists API Documentation (Enterprise)