Google Maps to Excel: what Excel changes without asking

How do you get Google Maps data into Excel?

Lead Finder exports CSV that Excel opens directly, and the risk is not the export but what Excel does to the data on the way in. Excel infers a type for every column and applies it silently. Phone numbers beginning with a zero are read as numbers and lose that zero, which breaks dialling for every market where local numbers start with one. Long numeric strings are converted to scientific notation, which affects coordinates and any numeric identifier. Text that resembles a date is converted to one, which occasionally catches business names and opening hours. None of these produce a warning, and all of them are easier to prevent at import than to repair afterwards.

Leading zeros on phone numbers

In most of the world outside North America, local phone numbers begin with a trunk zero. Excel reads such a column as numeric and discards the leading digit, so every number in the file becomes one digit short and none of them dial.

The fix is to import rather than open. Excel import options allow a column to be declared as text before the data is parsed, which preserves the number exactly as extracted. Opening the file by double-clicking skips that step entirely, which is why this damage is so common.

Coordinates and scientific notation

Latitude and longitude carry many decimal places, and Excel may render them in scientific notation or round them, either of which degrades precision enough to move a pin noticeably. For territory splitting or route planning that matters.

Declaring those columns as text on import preserves them exactly. If mapping or distance calculations are needed later, converting back to a numeric type deliberately at that point is safer than letting Excel decide at the door.

Autocorrect on business names

Excel autocorrects text as it is entered and occasionally on import, adjusting capitalisation and replacing character sequences. Business names are exactly the kind of text that suffers, since they frequently break normal spelling conventions deliberately.

The practical protection is the same as for the other two problems: import as text and check a sample of rows against the original export before doing anything else with the file.

Related reading: CSV encoding and delimiters , using Google Sheets instead .