If you've ever needed to get a list of locations — survey points, site visits, sensor readings, anything with a latitude and longitude — into Google Earth, you've probably run into the same wall: Google Earth doesn't read CSV files directly. It wants KML or KMZ. Converting between the two used to mean opening desktop GIS software just for this one task. It doesn't need to.
What you need before you start
A CSV or Excel file with, at minimum, two columns: a latitude and a longitude. Column
names don't need to be exact — KML Studio auto-detects
common variations like lat/lon, latitude/longitude,
or Y/X. Any other columns in your file (a name, a category, notes)
carry through as attributes on each point.
The 3 steps
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Upload your file
Drag your CSV or Excel file onto KML Studio. The tool reads your columns and suggests which ones are latitude and longitude — confirm or correct that mapping if needed.
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Style your points
Choose an icon from the built-in library, set a color, and — if your data has a category column (like "status" or "type") — apply different colors per category automatically. Pick from four popup themes for how each point's details appear when clicked in Google Earth.
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Export and open
Download as KML (a single readable XML file) or KMZ (compressed, the more common choice for sharing). Double-click it and it opens directly in Google Earth, with every point styled exactly as you set it up.
A note on file size
Everything runs server-side, so even a few thousand points process in seconds — no waiting on your own computer's memory the way some desktop tools require. The free tier supports files up to the platform's standard upload limit; contact us if you're working with a genuinely large dataset that needs batch handling.
Ready to convert your own file?
Open KML Studio →