Spreadsheet formatting

In order to ensure your spreadsheet is geocoded properly, you need to check three things before uploading: whether it has headers, formatting the addresses or coordinates consistently in either single column or multiple-column format, and including country (if geocoding Canadian 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, zip/postal code [+ 'Canada' for Canada]
• Street address, zip/postal code [+ 'Canada' for Canada]
• Street address, city, state/province [+ 'Canada' for Canada]
• city, state/province [+ 'Canada' for Canada]
• zip/postal code [+ 'Canada' for Canada]
• Latitude/longitude

Spreadsheet Geocoding Formats

If you do not have data for a certain field (like ZIP), 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 coordinates 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

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, include a country column or "Canada" exactly

• With Canadian addresses, a Country column must be present and it needs to say "Canada" exactly (no abbreviations)
• If no country is given, USA will be assumed
• Note that you may input postal codes, but full postal codes will not be returned as they are proprietary to Canada Post.