How to enter coordinates in Google Earth / maps

If you want to enter a specific coordinate in Google Maps or Google Earth, you only need to type it in the search engine, with certain rules to respect. It is a very practical way out in case you want to send someone by chat or email a coordinate that we want them to view.

The nomenclature of degrees

Google Earth uses latlong-type angular format coordinate systems, so they are required to be written in this form in the order “latitude, longitude”.

In the case of latitudes for the northern hemisphere, it will be necessary to write it in positive, in negative for the southern hemisphere. In the case of latitudes, for the eastern hemisphere (from Greenwich to Asia) it will be positive and for the west, that is, to America it will be negative.

In case of Google Earth, it is written in the left bar, it is written down and then click on search

In case of Google Maps, in the upper left search engine, and then the "search" button is pressed as shown in the following examples.

1. Coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds(DMS): 41°24’12.2″N 2°10’26.5″E

In this case, the decimals must be in the seconds and the degrees must be rounded.

It means that that coordinate is 41 degrees above the equator, because it is positive and 2 degrees east of Greenwich, because it is positive. A common mistake is the minute symbol, you should use ('), often people confuse it with the apostrophe and get an error (´).

In case you have trouble finding the symbol, what you can do is copy paste from this address 41 ° 24'12.2 "N 2 ° 10'26.5" E and just change the data.

2. Coordinates in degrees and minutes (DMM): 41 24.2028, 2 10.4418

The degrees are rounded and the minutes include the decimals that the seconds would take. As you can see, the same coordinate is reflected at the bottom only in degrees.

3. Coordinates in decimal degrees without minutes or seconds (DD): 41.40338, 2.17403

In this case there are only degrees and it is the most used type lat / lon style and as you can see, always in the upper bar the coordinate in graods, minutes and seconds is maintained.

4. UTM coordinates in Google Maps

For UTM coordinates there is no functionality in Google Maps that allows entering the coordinates. You can do that with an Excel template and drag them as shown in the following application.

Step 1. Download the data feed template.  Although the article focuses on UTM coordinates, the application has latitude and longitude templates with decimal degrees, as well as in degrees, minutes and seconds format.

Step 2. Upload the template. By selecting the template with the data, the system will alert if there was data that could not be validated; Among these validations includes:

• If the coordinate columns are empty
• If the coordinates have non-numeric fields
• If the zones are not between the 1 and the 60
• If the hemisphere field there is something different than North or South.

In the case of latlong coordinates, it is valid that the latitudes do not exceed 90 degrees or that longitudes exceed 180.

The description data supports html content, like the one shown in the example that includes the display of an image. It would still support things like links to routes on the Internet or the local disk of the computer, videos, or any rich content.

Step 3. Visualize the data in the table and on the map.

Immediately the data is uploaded, the table will show the alphanumeric data and the map the geographical locations; As you can see, the upload process includes the transformation of these coordinates into geographic format as required by Google Maps.

Dragging the icon on the map you can have a preview of street views or 360 views uploaded by users.

Once the icon is released, the points placed on the Google Street View can be viewed and navigated over it. By clicking on the icons you can see the details.

Step 4. Get map coordinates. Points can be added to an empty table or to one uploaded from Excel; the coordinates will be displayed based on that template, auto-numbering the label column and adding in the detail that was obtained from the map.

Here you can see the template working in video.

Download the Kml map or the table in excel using the gTools service.

You enter a download code and then you have the file that you can view in Google Earth or any GIS program; The application shows where to obtain a download code with which you can download up to 400 times, with no limit to how many vertices there can be in each download using the gTools API. Just the map shows the coordinates from Gooogle Earth, with the three-dimensional model views activated.

In addition to kml you can also download to excel format in UTM, latitude / longitude in decimals, degrees / minutes / seconds and even dxf to open it with AutoCAD or Microstation.

In the following video you can see how the data and other features of the application are downloaded.

Here you can see this service in full page.