Jan
21

Working with Maps in Excel

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Yes, now it is possible to work with nice charts that have Maps in Excel 2013 and later versions that come with the Power View. It is an extremely powerful reporting tool. Sometimes we need to get sales reports and we want to identify regions and patterns of sales related to the customers.

In this article you will learn how to create cool reports in Excel. We will show countries, cities and specific geographical points. This article is for newbies who want to learn about this exciting area.

Getting Started

Let's start with a simple Excel sheet
Start with a simple Excel sheet

We have countries, the revenue and the number of customers in an Excel Sheet. We want to see the revenue per country on a World Map using Excel. So, let's create a report with maps.

First, select your data. Then click on the Format as Table icon and pick a table style.
Click on the Format as Table icon and pick a table style

Your table will look like the one below:
A sample table for a Power View report

The next step is to create the charts with Power View. To do this, go to the menu and select the tab Insert -> Power View.
Select the tab Insert and click on Power View.

If it is the first time that you use Power View you will be prompted to enable the feature. So, just press the Enable button.
You will be prompted to enable Power View

Please note that you will need Silverlight installed. Silverlight is a tool for creating interactive applications, and it is required to generate Power View reports. You will see a message offering to install the program. Click on the Install Silverlight link to get it.
Click on the Install Silverlight link to get the application.

If you receive the message that your current security settings do not allow this file to be downloaded, visit Your current security settings do not allow this file to be downloaded to solve the problem.

Once enabled, a new sheet will be created for our Power View reports:
A new sheet will be created for our Power View reports

Now choose the Map option.
Choose the Map option

In order to enlarge the map, click in the bottom right corner and move your mouse cursor to the right and down.
Click in the bottom right corner and move your mouse cursor to the right and down

As you can see, the countries from your Excel Sheet (South Africa, France, Italy and Bolivia) are now displayed on the map:
Countries from your Excel Sheet are on the map

What do the blue circles mean?

Blue circles on the map show the revenue. The bigger a circle the bigger our revenue is. With Power View you can chose what you want to check on the map using the Size field on the Power View Fields pane:
See the Power View Fields pane

Awesome. Isn't it?

Can Power View detect cities?

Power View is great in detecting cities. Let's try it with this Excel table:
Sample table in Excel 2013

We want to see the revenues per city on the map.

Follow the same steps to create reports that we used for the countries. Now it will be easier because you do not have to install or enable anything.

We are going to create a new Power View sheet and select the map option:
Power View sheet after selecting the Map option

As you can see, Power View spots the cities and it shows Houston, San Jose and Des Moines.

Sometimes there are cities with the same name in different countries. For example, there is a city named Santa Cruz in USA, Chile, Spain, and Bolivia. In this case you may need to give more details to display the correct city.

How can I specify the country and city with Power View?

In order to solve the problem with identically named cities, you need to specify both the name of the city and country in Excel:
Specify both the name of the city and country in Excel

In the city column, we type the city and the country separated by comma.

To update the information right click on the map and select the option Refresh Sheet.
To update the information right click on the map and select the option Refresh Sheet

With the country specified we are now sure that all the cities in our Excel table are from the USA as expected.
Cities on the map in Excel 2013

It can detect cities around the world automatically. Cool isn't it?

What if I want to graph specific geographical coordinates on the map?

If you want to display certain geographical coordinates on the map, your Excel can do that. For this purpose we will work with latitude and longitude. These coordinates are necessary to graph the points on our map.

If you do not know anything about latitude and longitude, please have a look at the article Geographic coordinate system.

In Excel you will need the latitude and longitude to graph specific points. You can get the points using Google Earth, your smartphone can help you to get this information or you can use any other tools.

In this sample I will use the website satelliteview.com

You will need the latitude and longitude to graph specific points
As you can see, it is possible to obtain the latitude and longitude of any blog from the site.

Now you will need a table with the Latitude and Longitude columns in Excel:
Table with the Latitude and Longitude columns in Excel

As we did before, go to Insert <->Power View and create a map.

Power View detected the Latitude and Longitude columns. We need to add Revenue to the Locations list, because we want to see the Revenue value per store on the map. Please see the screenshot below:

Add the Revenue value to Locations

Now you have the stores displayed on the map!
See your report in Excel with Power View

As you can see now, we have got an extremely powerful report in Excel with Power View. All we need are Excel, Silverlight and some geography knowledge.

From this article you learnt how to graph the countries, cities and geographical points using Excel and Power View.

53 comments to "Working with Maps in Excel"

  5. Cristian Cox says:
    July 21, 2017 at 5:45 pm

    Hello, good afternoon:

    I have a problem.

    A group of people in my work each week send me reports using their own worksheets and I want to extract this data to my single analisys worksheet
    Each worksheet has different sheets labeled with the date, for example:
    sheet1 labaled: 17-07-21 sheet2 labeled: 17-07-20 and so on.

    It would be easy for me to extract data from these different worksheets just linking the label if they would be the same label all the time but because the label is the date, it is always changing and the previous link would be lost.

    How I can solve this problem using Macros (VB)?
    basically how to solve the issue with this changing date label?

    I would apreciate your help.

    thanks

    Cristian

    Reply
  6. Eric says:
    July 12, 2017 at 8:25 am

    Good day,

    I am monitoring 15 vessels daily. For this I copy the vessel's positions in an excel file. I would like this positions to be shown automatically in google earth (or maps), but not all the positions, only the last one added. Is there software for this, or another way to manage this?

    Best regards,
    Eric

    Reply
  7. R2016 says:
    August 13, 2016 at 7:06 pm

    Do anyone knows how to get started on this?

    Thank you.

    M3A5 Cost-to-Charge Ratio
    M3A5- IV.A.4 Cost-to-Charge Ratio Worksheet.xlsx (45.449 KB)
    M3A5-IV.A.3 & 4-Revenue Cycle & Reimbursement–Cost to Charge.docx (24.961 KB)
    M3A5 Cost-to-Charge Ratio Exercises
    For the following questions, use the Cost-to-Charge Ratio Worksheets file provided. Provide your answers in an attachment.
    1. Use mappings to figure out cost-to-charge ratios for departments not yet calculated.
    a. Apply relevant information to the trial balance to populate the cost centers, sub account information, salary/other type, and cost center.
    b. In the charge section, apply mappings for cost center departments to the CDM summary.
    c. Aggregate costs and charges in the cost-to-charge ratio tab.
    2. An audit has uncovered mammography charges in an off-site clinic, but the costs for the mammography services are already allocated to the RAD-MAM department. The total charges for mammography in the clinic are $300,000. What is the new cost-to-charge ratio for mammography?
    3. Due to competitive forces and favorable managed care contracting, management decides to restrike radiology charges such that the cost-to-charge ratio for each radiology department will be no less than 0.5000. What is the target for total charges for each category? If the change to charges is uniform, what is the factor to apply to each cost center’s charges (old price × conversion factor = new price)?
    Source: Brian Herdman, Operations Manager, Financial Reimbursement Services of CBIZ K&A Consulting

    Reply
  8. Hemant g says:
    August 4, 2016 at 3:36 pm

    Great ! thank you very much for guiding us.
    Sir i have to show mfg. plants and exporting country with different colors how i can i show them with different colors like we export our product to srilanka
    and have mfg plants in Columbia so how i can show them with different colors.
    Best Regards

    Reply
  9. Pieter Naude says:
    August 1, 2016 at 5:42 am

    Great Tutorial, thanks.

    Would it be possible to show a pie chart per country? So lets say for example Bolivia's revenue is made up of 3 products. Would it be possible to have a pie chart in that country showing the piechart with the 3 products? This would be used to compare which product is sold more in a specific country.

    Reply
  12. Bhupesh Dua says:
    April 3, 2016 at 4:59 pm

    Hi, I want to create a hub and spoke diagram using this. How can I do that. like A is supplying to B,C,D locations so connected via a line... Pls help

    Reply
  15. evoud says:
    March 9, 2016 at 9:37 am

    Thank you, But how can we create a map where countries are listed by different color, for example to insert 4 different colors for each of the 4 different countries I have?

    thanks

    Reply
  17. Siphiwe says:
    February 8, 2016 at 1:17 pm

    Hi,

    Please assist

    I have been assigned to create a map and I was following your instructions only to find out that I am using windows 2010,

    Please assist by creating for a process flow same as 2013 but for 2010

    Siphiwe

    RSA

    Reply
  21. Angela says:
    January 11, 2016 at 11:32 am

    Hi, this is great thanks for posting.

    I need to publish the Excel generated maps in Powerpoint. I can't see how to do that other than by screenshots which isn't clever. Can you help?

    Thanks.

    Reply
  26. Anton says:
    July 5, 2015 at 6:58 pm

    Hi.

    Using Power Map for Excel 2013, I am trying to figure out how to highlight an entire country. Currently, when I have a Country name, it simply places a dot in the middle of that country. I want to highlight the entire country.

    Does anyone perhaps know how to accomplish this? An example of what I am trying to achieve can be seen 2m55s into this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFEq3m2RABQ&list=WL&index=5

    Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!!!

    Reply
  30. Shrav says:
    March 17, 2015 at 2:47 pm

    Life-saving article, really sorted me out for a major client presentation. Is it possible to format according to the filter set, e.g. if the co-ordinates are filtered for North, Central and South, can I pick red dots for North, blue for Central and green for South?

    Reply
  32. ali says:
    February 23, 2015 at 6:30 pm

    thanks a lot for help full article
    i don't know way you put the revenue in location and in size part???
    can you explain for me???
    thanks a lot

    Reply
  33. Jason says:
    January 22, 2015 at 4:10 pm

    thanks, when I tried to map data for Sweden with 368 cities, it says "Too many "Column1" values. Not displaying all data. Filter the data or choose another field. Any ideas

    Reply
  35. Milos says:
    January 22, 2015 at 9:10 am

    Great tutorial, but I was wondering is it posibile to show information by administrative boundaries (municipalities)? In my case I would like to plot information over municipalities of Serbia.

    Reply
  41. Alexandru says:
    October 30, 2014 at 9:07 am

    Hello!
    I would like to use power view maps on my computer that doesn't have internet acces. How can I use offline maps in Excel?

    Reply
  43. Mirela says:
    October 10, 2014 at 11:31 am

    Hi, thanks for your post, it was really helpful.
    but I have one question though: I'd like to mark on the map some regions that are my sales zones. Is there any tool that allows me to save a map and mark it as needed, and then to use it in power view?

    thanks a lot!

    Reply
  46. Juan says:
    September 26, 2014 at 11:28 pm

    Hi.

    Thanks for the example. I would like to ask you what's the relation between this tool and Power Map. I just found this amazing tools today and I'm starting to learn about.

    Juan

    Reply
    • Martin says:
      August 24, 2014 at 7:38 am

      Hi Daniel,

      Looks like a great application. I´m searching for a non-ArcGIS tool that enables making world maps with standard deviation of daily maximum temperature of cities around the globe, with the final goal to create a world map with isolines (in this case: lines connecting points with the same standard deviation). I see that everything till the isolines is possible; I don´t have excel 2013 yet, but do you know if also isolines can be created by this excel tool?

      Kind regards,

      Martin

      Reply

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