Uploading your own data file to a map

As well as your Contacts and the built-in datasets, Maps can display a geographic data file of your own — a set of points from another system, a boundary file, or anything else you hold as map data.

Important: the file is not stored

The file is read and displayed locally in your browser. It is not saved or uploaded to SwiftFox. That means:

• Nobody else sees the layer, and it is not part of your account's data.
• The layer disappears when you leave the map, and saving the map as a workspace does not preserve it.
• You need to keep the source file and load it again each time you want to see it.

Accepted file formats

• KML
• GeoJSON
• CSV

How to load a file

1. On the Maps landing page, click Add new data to your map.
2. Under Add external data, click Upload your own data. The Load data file area opens on the right.
3. Drag your file onto the drop area.
4. Click Add data layer to map, then Done.

The file's contents are drawn on the map and a row for it appears in Your Data Center, where you can show or hide it, adjust its opacity, zoom to its extent, or delete it like any other layer.

Preparing a CSV file

A CSV needs a column heading row, and it must contain one of the following pairs of columns so that each row can be placed on the map:

• lon, lat
• lng, lat
• longitude, latitude
• x, y
• easting, northing

Use whichever pair matches the export you already have — you do not need to rename columns to a single preferred form. Any other columns in the file are carried along with each point.

If the map comes up empty after loading a CSV, the heading row or the coordinate columns are the first thing to check.

Using an uploaded layer with your other data

An uploaded file behaves like any other layer once it is on the map, so you can overlay it with List Builder layers and built-in datasets and compare them. Use Opacity in Your Data Center to keep overlapping layers readable, and remember that a broad shaded layer will take clicks that were meant for markers underneath it.

Related User Guides

• Maps — Overview
• Creating a map & adding a List Builder data layer
• Managing layers (show or hide, opacity, zoom to extent, delete)
• Saving & printing maps
• Maps — end-to-end workflows