Spreadsheets

Import and map Excel, CSV and Google Sheets data for location-based visualization.

Tabular data such as spreadsheets can reference geography in many forms: explicitly with lat/lon points and geometries, or implicitly with zip codes, place names, or street addresses. When you upload a spreadsheet, Felt uses AI to identify the geometry columns in your data and depending on the type of geometry will either use Geocoding or Geomatching.

Geocoding

Sometimes, our data doesn’t have explicit coordinates, such as latitudes and longitudes. Instead, we might have implicit geospatial data, such as names of street addresses. Geocoding is the process of converting address data into points.

To visualize address data make sure your fields have appropriate names, then drag and drop your spreadsheet or CSV directly into a map!

By default, Felt will geocode address data for up to 10,000 addresses per upload. If you need a higher limit, contact sales to upgrade to our Enterprise plan.

Preparing address data

Address fields should be given easy-to-find names, such as:

• address for single fields with complete address

• number & street for house numbers and street names

• city or locality for place names

• zip for postal code

• state, region, or province for first-order administrative divisions like U.S. states

• country for countries

Reviewing accuracy

Geocoding isn’t a perfect process. Much like a search engine, sometimes you might not find exactly what you’re looking for, depending on both your input and the data that’s available.

Fortunately, Felt lets you review the quality of your geocoding upload, and also download the results so you can fine-tune your input if needed.

You can toggle the Geocoding Results any time you want from the table view by clicking "See full report" in the Found column and even download the results to fix issues and reupload.

Geomatching

Tables often reference countries, states, zip codes or other regions without including the geometry themselves. Historically, you’d have to join this data with other datasets to work with it on a map. Felt does this automatically with Geomatching.

Available geomatching regions

Data will be checked for the geographic regions listed below and converted to polygon geometries when possible. Optionally, hints present in the column name can be used to choose among valid matches, such as “zip” used to name a column of U.S. ZIP codes.

	Source	Example Values	Column Name Hints
Countries	Natural Earth Admin 0 United States point of view	Names: United States, Ukraine ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes: US, UA ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes: USA, UKR	country, nation, adm0, admin0, admin-0
Global First-Order Admin Areas	Natural Earth Admin 1 States, provinces, etc.	Names: California, Kiev ISO 3166-2 codes: US-CA, UA-32 Admin-1 codes: USA-3521, UKR-321	state, province, adm1, admin1, admin-1
Global Time Zones	OSM Timezone Boundary Builder	Names: America/Los_Angeles, Europe/Kyiv	tz, tzinfo, timezone, time zone
EU Statistical Units (NUTS 1)	Eurostat GISCO Reference Data	Names: Thüringen, Αττική NUTS codes: DEG, EL3	state, province, region, nuts
EU Statistical Units (NUTS 2)	Eurostat GISCO Reference Data	Names: Lazio, Θεσσαλία NUTS codes: ITI4, EL61	state, province, region, nuts
EU Statistical Units (NUTS 3)	Eurostat GISCO Reference Data	Names: Eure-et-Loir, Essex Thames Gateway NUTS codes: FRB02, UKH37	state, province, region, nuts
EU Local Admin. Units (LAU)	Eurostat GISCO Reference Data	Names: Eggendorf im Traunkreis,Čejč LAU codes: AT_41004, 586099 GISCO codes: AT_41004, CZ_586099	municipio, municipality, commune, comuni, gemeinde, lau
US States	U.S. Census 2022 boundary file	Names: California, New York Postal codes: CA, NY FIPS codes: 06,04000US36, 0400000US48	state
US Counties	U.S. Census 2021 boundary file	FIPS codes: 06001, 05000US36061, 0500000US48453	county
US CBSAs	U.S. Census 2022 boundary file	Names: San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Metro Area FIPS codes: 41860, 33000US35620, 3300000US12420	cbsa
US Zip Codes	USPS ZIP locale detail U.S. Census 2012 boundary file U.S. Census 2022 boundary file	ZIP codes: 94612, 06511	zip, zipcode, postcode
US Census Tracts	U.S. Census 2022 boundary file	FIPS codes: 06001402900, 14000US09170141900, 1400000US48453001103	tract

H3 geomatching

This feature is only available to customers on the Enterprise plan. To upgrade, contact sales.

When a spreadsheet contains H3 identifiers, Felt automatically detects and geomatches them to hexagonal cells at the encoded resolution.

Supported H3 formats

Felt will automatically detect and process both hexadecimal string (e.g., 8928308280fffff) and integer (e.g., 613196848522715135) representations of H3 identifiers.

The H3 level detected from your IDs is automatically used as the default resolution for display.

To ensure Felt correctly identifies and maps your H3 data:

• Column headers should be clearly labeled (e.g., h3_id, h3_index )

• H3 indexes should be in standard format without additional characters

• All H3 indexes should be at the same resolution level

If H3 identifiers aren't automatically geomatched

• Open Spreadsheet settings by clicking the gear icon () in the upper right of the table
• Select H3 as the Area type, choose the correct H3 column, then click Update spreadsheet

Selecting a geometry column

There may be times where Felt doesn't automatically detect the columns with spatial data. Fortunately, you can always select the one most appropriate for the data you are visualizing.

Simply open the data table, and click spreadsheet settings to select the appropriate columns and map them to the right field types.

Selecting address columns will result in Geocoding addresses, while country names or ZIP codes will result in Geomatching regions.

Best practices

• Uploads can include geographic data in unprojected decimal degrees latitude and longitude

• Geographic fields should be given easy-to-find names, such as:

  • geometry, wkt, or geom_wkt

  • x & y

  • lat & lon, latitude & longitude, or lat & lng

• Whole geometries must be in one of these formats:

  • Well Known Text

    • examples: POINT(-122 37), LINESTRING (-122 37, -123 38)

  • Hex-encoded Well Known Binary

    • example:'01010000000000000000805ec00000000000804240'

  • GeoJSON Geometry Objects

    • example: {'type': 'Point', 'coordinates': (-122.0, 37.0)}

Changing geometry

There may be times you want to change the geometry drawn by Felt to customize the way your data is shown on the map. Making these changes allows you to color-code the data the way you need it displayed.

Some examples

1. Choosing different columns in a spreadsheet to ensure the right location data is used.

2. Change the points on a map to fill up their associated province, state, or zip code region

1. Symbolize an area or region as a point instead

Changing the selected geometry

Being able to change the default geometry selected by Felt based on different data attributes is possible because Felt can find the location of data using a number of different methods including:

• Addresses (this process is called geocoding)

• Provinces, states, zip codes, countries (this process is called geomatching)

• Latitude & Longitude coordinates

To change the selected geometry:

• Select the uploaded layer

• Click the "View Data" icon. This will open a view of the CSV in Felt

• Click the gear icon in the table to open spreadsheet settings

• Select the columns you want Felt to use for the geometry for example, if addresses were used you would get points but if you want polygons you can instead choose the option to draw features with a State attribute

For reference

• Coordinates and Addresses types are typically used for drawing points.

• Natural Earth v1, US Census, 2020, and Eurostat, 2021 types should be used for drawing areas/polygons.

• WKT and WKB are more advanced types that can be used for drawing points, lines, or areas.

• Click Update spreadsheet to get the new results

Troubleshooting

See the Troubleshooting page for common upload failures and how to fix them.