Excel To Gpx Waypoint Conversion Tool

[Saifan Pilot]

Hello all,

Often customers provide us with a list of waypoints for a job in a spreadsheet or table.

There are online tools that can help converting these to a GPS file, however they're are cumbersome to use and also require internet connectivity.

 

I created the attached tool, waypoints in Lat/Long or UTM coordinates can be copy pasted into this tool written in Excel which can generate a GPX output file that can be uploaded to your GPS.

 

Instructions on how to use it are provided in the spreadsheet, basically you copy paste the waypoint names, optional description or comment, Lat and Long or UTM coordinates and then click the conversion button, which creates a GPX file, which can be uploaded to your GPS using Garmin Map Source or Base Camp.

 

If you find any issues or bugs, please let me know.

 

P.S

I wrote this on a Mac, it should work also in Windows, but I can not test it, let me know if there are any issues in Windows.

 

Download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o9fw4076xddsftu/Excel2GPX%20v1.02.xlsm.zip?dl=0

[Saifan Pilot]

Table can include as many rows as you like. An example of a table containing 3 rows (waypoints), would look like this:

 

[Topher]

Thanks so much for the work you have put into this Guy! I have the 2008 version of Excel which won't open macro's on my Mac but I can open it and see how much effort you've put into it, it's a very user friendly interface and I'm sure it works very well. Is there anything iPad based that you recommend to open and convert in a hurry in the bush or are we relegated to using our laptops/PC's?

[Saifan Pilot]

It might work in Excel 2008, note this tool relies on macros to function properly therefore you MUST enable macros. If the following window pops up when you launch the tool you MUST click on "Enable Macros" else it will not work. This is also true for Excell 2011 on Mac and the Windows Excel versions also.

In windows the process to enable Macros is slightly different, usually brings up a tab above the spreadsheet that will look like this:

You would then need to click on the Options... button, then on the next window click on "Enable this content" and click OK

 

 

I'm not sure anything would work on an iPad for this.

The only other way I know of converting a list of user waypoints from Excel to Garmin GPX file (which is how I used to do it until I created this tool) is using GPS Data Team's POI Converter https://garmin.gps-data-team.com/poi_manager.php

It's much more cumbersome to use. You MUST format the Excel spread sheet in the following format and order

Decimal Long, Decimal Lat, Name

So it would look something like this:

Then you would need to File → Save as...

Select Format: Windows Comma Separated Values (.CSV)

The CSV file will look like this:

-110.123,56.4,WP 001

-111.234,58.75,WP 002

-111.375,58.885,WP 003

Then you can use the generated CSV file with data-team link above, and click the GPX button to save it as a GPX file.

Again, this process is much more cumbersome, and only works with decimal degrees (DD.ddd), it will not work with other formats (DD MM SS.sss, nor DD MM.mmm nor UTM) and requires internet connectivity which we don't always have in the bush.

Hope this helps.

[Topher]

Hey Guy,

 

When I open mine and my wife's versions of Excel, it tells me that Visual Basic macros do not work in Office 2008 for Mac. It looks like it might be time to upgrade!

 

Thanks for your time and effort!

[Saifan Pilot]

Updated version 1.10 works with southern hemisphere. Thanks for Kimberly Fish for pointing this out.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nqg8pq1gxwu1se8/Excel2GPX%20v1.10.xlsm.zip?dl=0

Excel2GPX v1.10.xlsm.zip

[tomstheword]

Wow. That is awesome. Thank you very much for making and sharing this one. I can only imagine how much time went into that one.

[Saifan Pilot]

On 2017-04-27 at 10:16 PM, tomstheword said:

Wow. That is awesome. Thank you very much for making and sharing this one. I can only imagine how much time went into that one.

You're welcome.

I updated it to version 2.1 (fixed bug around the equator and also added by request waypoint date, Time, Elevation).

 

Excel2GPX v2.10.xlsm.zip

[Saifan Pilot]

Created version 3, now supports output to GPX (Garmin GPS and BaseCamp) and also KML (Google Earth and ForeFlight)

Excel2GPS v3.00.xlsm

[GPS Fan]

Wow.. this is excellent.  Thank you for developing it.

I had one question... is there a hard limit to the number of characters that can be in the "description" cell?  When I put more than 256 characters in that field, I get the following when clicking the "Convert to GPS" button (.gpx format selected): "Run-time error '13': Type mismatch"