Just released a new version of my Excel spreadsheet that lets you plot data on a Yahoo! Map, this makes an adjustment to get around a server side change that made the template unusable by just about everybody. It’s now fixed, hooray!
People have asked me to add geocoding to this and I’ll try to get around to adding that, maybe over the holidays. I also want to add the ability to specify custom icons for each map position, which shouldn’t be too difficult.
Related posts:
I’m a novice working on two things with the YahooMapMaker.xlt.
1. I use Opera 8 browser and the initial form set up by the template has a blank line at the top that left in causes Yahoo to return: XML Parsing Error: xml declaration not at start of external entity. Line Number 2, Column 0. I’m assuming this is something being caused by Opera, or possibly something odd w/my installation of Excel, but will see what I can figure out.
2. I have an old and huge collection of geographic correspondences (FIPS codes, Capitals, Population in year X, name of currency, variations on names, names in native language/script, etc – small crosswalkish stuff that helps link up assorted datasets) & will use this opportunity to learn how to have the function GetCountry go through an external sorted list of cases queried out of that table (or someone else’s out there, I’m sure there’s more complete versions of the same idea already).
Wanted to let you know. I was pretty jazzed to see this work; I’d figured Excel would be a great tool to learn this sort of thing with but yours was the first one I tried that really made something happen. The aim is to get hooked. :)
I’m a novice working on two things with the YahooMapMaker.xlt.
1. I use Opera 8 browser and the initial form set up by the template has a blank line at the top that left in causes Yahoo to return: XML Parsing Error: xml declaration not at start of external entity. Line Number 2, Column 0. I’m assuming this is something being caused by Opera, or possibly something odd w/my installation of Excel, but will see what I can figure out.
2. I have an old and huge collection of geographic correspondences (FIPS codes, Capitals, Population in year X, name of currency, variations on names, names in native language/script, etc – small crosswalkish stuff that helps link up assorted datasets) & will use this opportunity to learn how to have the function GetCountry go through an external sorted list of cases queried out of that table (or someone else’s out there, I’m sure there’s more complete versions of the same idea already).
Wanted to let you know. I was pretty jazzed to see this work; I’d figured Excel would be a great tool to learn this sort of thing with but yours was the first one I tried that really made something happen. The aim is to get hooked. :)
Terrific to hear, I’m glad you’re going to get some use out of this. If you can figure out specifically what it is about the XML this thing generates that Opera doesn’t like, let me know and I’ll be happy to adjust it (I don’t use Opera myself).
Do the maps print?
When I click on Printable version I always get
XML parsing error: mismatched tag. Line number 5, column 2.
First of all, I want to say how much I love this tool! However, I recently converted to Office 2007/Vista and now it seems I can’t run a query because there is no “menu” option; just the new Ribbon. Any ideas? I hope I didn’t overlook something stupid…
No sooner than I said, “I hope I didn’t overlook something stupid…”, I did! In the ribbon, it is located under “Add-Ins” and then to teh far-left, the “Display on Yahoo! Maps” option is available. :-)
Cool, Jarrett, thanks.
I was using this tool in 2003 but the rest of the team uses 2007. I managed to get the “Add-Ins” tab to appear for them and they get to the last step (Send to Yahoo Maps). A message appears that it will not be allowed due to “cross scripting”. Any ideas on what happened and how to get past this? We like this tool and would love to be able to use it with 2007….
Hi Kelly,
Sorry this isn’t working in Excel 2007, this is the first I’ve heard of this. I would imagine that from the error message you’ve reported, Microsoft has helped us by removing functionality we need to retrieve data for the map, probably to close a security hole. Unfortunately, I’m loathe to maintain this since the underlying data source (the Yahoo Maps API) may be shut down to converted into a for-pay service soon.
Now that I’ve left Yahoo I’m free to do stuff with maps on a consulting basis. If you have a tool in mind that requires mapping and you’d want to pursue this as a consulting engagement, please let me know.