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01
What does your spreadsheet need before you map it?
A spreadsheet is ready to map when every place has its own row and every row holds an address a stranger could find: house number, street, city, state and ZIP. Mapping tools look up each row on its own, a step called geocoding, so anything missing from a row is missing from the search.
| Name | Street | City | State | ZIP | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harlow Dental | 2216 N High St | Columbus | OH | 43201 | Back entrance |
| Ruiz, Ana | 88 W Kenworth Rd | Columbus | OH | 43214 | Dog in yard |
| Maple Grove Church | 7 E Wilson Bridge Rd | Worthington | OH | 43085 |
Fix these before you import
- A header row in row 1 (
Name,Street,City,State,ZIP), with no report title or merged cells above it. - One place per row. Two addresses in one cell, or one customer spread over two rows, maps as nonsense.
- City and state on every row, even when every customer is in the same town. A bare
Main Stcan match a Main St anywhere. - ZIP codes stored as text, so
02139isn't shortened to2139. - No blank rows, subtotals or repeated headers in the middle of the data.
- The addresses on one tab. Many tools read only the first sheet of a workbook, so move the list there or save that tab as a CSV.
Some tools want the whole address in one column. If yours does, the address list cleaner joins split columns for you, and how to combine address columns in Excel has the formulas.
Free toolRoute planning spreadsheet templateStarting a list from scratch? Download a sheet with the address columns already laid out and an example row filled in.02
Which tool should you use to map addresses from Excel?
Use Google My Maps when the goal is a map to look at or share, and a route planner when the goal is to drive to the pins. Excel itself can't drop a pin on a street address: its built-in map charts shade whole regions, such as states, counties or ZIP codes, by a number in your data.
| Tool | How many rows | What you get | Puts stops in driving order? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google My Maps | 2,000 per import | A pin map you can share or embed | No |
| Excel map chart | Regions only | States, counties or ZIP codes shaded by a value | No |
| Google Maps directions | 10 places, typed in | Turn-by-turn for a short trip | No, it keeps your order |
| EZRoutePlanner | 30 saved free, up to 10,000 paid | Pins, then routes in the shortest order | Yes, one click |
Google My Maps is free with a Google account and good at what it does: a pin per row, pins colored by a column, and a link you can send. It isn't built for planning the drive, though, and it won't put the pins in an order. The step-by-step for My Maps is in how to import addresses into Google Maps.
03
How do you map a spreadsheet of addresses in EZRoutePlanner?
Drop the file in as it is. EZRoutePlanner's import works out which columns hold the address, so you don't need to merge the street, city and ZIP or rename the headers first.
- 1
Save the file
Keep it as Excel (.xlsx or the older .xls) or save it as CSV. Files up to 20 MB are accepted, which is far more rows than most customer lists.
- 2
Open the spreadsheet import
Sign up free, choose to add stops from a spreadsheet, and drop the file in.
- 3
Let it find the address
AI looks at your columns and works out which ones make up the address, even when the street, city, state and ZIP are split up or the header says something like
Service Location. - 4
Pick a label
Choose one column, usually the customer or business name, as each pin's label. That's the name you'll see on the map and in your routes. Other columns, such as phone numbers and notes, stay in your spreadsheet and aren't imported.
- 5
Review the map
Every row is looked up and shown as a pin before anything is saved. Rows where the match is uncertain are listed at the top, so you can fix them first. Repeated rows and addresses you've already saved are skipped, so importing an updated list later only adds the new customers.
- 6
Import
The pins are saved to your Address Book. The free plan holds 30 saved addresses; paid plans hold 200 to 10,000.
04
How do you check that every pin is in the right place?
Zoom out first, then in. Most wrong pins are obvious from far away: one pin in another state, or a cluster stacked on a downtown when your customers live in the suburbs. Those are addresses the map could only partly match.
- A pin far outside your area usually means a missing or wrong city or state, so the street matched one with the same name somewhere else.
- Several pins on one spot in the middle of a town or ZIP code means only the town or ZIP was found, not the street.
- A pin on the right road but the wrong end of it is common in rural areas, where maps estimate house numbers along the road.
- A pin in a field or a parking lot often belongs to a new build or a business park the map data hasn't caught up with.
In EZRoutePlanner, fix a pin by searching for the address again, typing its coordinates, or dragging the pin onto the right building, and the nearest address is found for you. A flag means "look at this one", not "this is wrong". Each cause and its fix is covered in why addresses land in the wrong place.
05
Can you map addresses from Google Sheets or Numbers?
Yes. Download the sheet as a file and import that. In Google Sheets choose File → Download → Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) or Comma-separated values (.csv). In Numbers choose File → Export To → Excel or CSV.
Google My Maps can also import straight from a Google Sheet in your Drive, with no download. Whichever route you take, check the ZIP column after exporting: a CSV opened and saved again in Excel can lose leading zeros.
06
How do you turn a map of pins into a route?
Pick the pins you'll visit together, decide where the day starts, and let the planner put them in order. A map of 80 customers isn't a route; Tuesday's 14 customers in the north end, starting from the shop, is.
- Select a day's stops. Click them, or draw a lasso around a neighborhood, and choose Create Route.
- Set the start. Your saved base (the shop, depot or home) or any address. Turn on Round Trip if you're coming back.
- Press Optimize Route. The stops are reordered into a short trip with your start kept in place, and the route is drawn on real roads with the distance of every leg.
- Take it with you. Open it in Google Maps as 10-stop links, share a link the driver opens in their phone's browser, or print a PDF route sheet.
On the free plan a route holds up to 30 stops, and you can make unlimited routes, kept one at a time. Paid plans from $20 a month keep every route at once, with up to 200 stops each. More on working from a sheet on the Excel route planner page.