.xlsx

MS Excel Viewer

Learn how Excel XLSX fits into geospatial workflows, what it is useful for, and why teams convert spreadsheet data into GIS-native formats.

Ensure your Excel sheet has columns for coordinates (lat/lon).

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MS Excel

Ensure your Excel sheet has columns for coordinates (lat/lon).

How to open MS Excel online

Map Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Ensure your Excel sheet has columns for coordinates (lat/lon).

Privacy

Files are processed on your device in the browser. GeoDataViewer does not upload your datasets to a server for viewing.

Common issues

If a dataset uses multiple required sidecar files, make sure you provide the complete set together. For best results, keep all sidecars in one zip archive when applicable.

Related tools

Measure distances, areas, elevation, and radius circles using the tools menu, then come back to inspect your MS Excel layer on the map.

What is MS Excel?

XLSX is the modern Microsoft Excel workbook format and is commonly used in geospatial workflows when the audience wants spreadsheet review more than a native geometry container.

Excel is often where stakeholders review, annotate, and exchange records, so spatial data frequently passes through XLSX even when the long-term working format is a GIS dataset.

A workbook becomes spatially useful only when sheets include coordinates, geometry text, or fields that another tool can interpret as location data.

What is MS Excel used for?

Sharing location-bearing tables with business users who live in spreadsheet workflows.
Reviewing, sorting, and annotating geospatial records outside a full GIS application.
Moving simple point or tabular outputs between GIS, reporting, and office-tool environments.

Common use cases

Asset inventories, inspection logs, and project lists with coordinate columns.
QA packages sent to non-GIS stakeholders for comments and corrections.
Import and export handoffs between GIS tools and spreadsheet-driven business processes.

Strengths

Extremely familiar to non-GIS users and easy to review manually.
Multi-sheet workbook structure is convenient for tabular reporting.
Good final-delivery option when the recipient needs editable rows more than native geometry behavior.

Limitations

XLSX is not a true spatial format and does not natively model geometry the way GIS containers do.
Large automated pipelines are often easier to manage in simpler text or database-backed formats.
Spatial metadata, CRS information, and complex geometry handling are less explicit than in GIS-native outputs.