Map function using Australian Local Government Areas

[ebreese]

Hi all, trying to use the map chart function with Australian Local Government Areas. Postcodes work fine, as do suburbs, however when trying to use Local Government Areas the map refuses to recognise it as geographical data.

I've tried both with setting the data as geographical and tying it to the correct entry, and as just plain text.

I've tried including Country/State as additional columns, but still no luck.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Emlyn

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hello @ebreese , 

the data that can be processed by filled maps can be very sketchy for locations outside the US. It may well be that the rendering engine does not recognise the boundaries for the local government areas you mention, because it does not fit into the schematic of how Microsoft / Bing breaks things down. They don't have much tolerance for non-US data. If I want to plot NZ data, I have to call the column "regions", if I call it "region" (singular) I get the same error you do.

There's probably not a lot you can do, except to send feedback via the smile icon in the upper right hand corner of the Excel window.

Don't shoot the messenger.

[#3]

@Ingeborg Hawighorst 

Thanks Ingeborg, I had a feeling it would be something like this, but hoped maybe there was one weird trick I was missing!

[#4]

@ebreese 

Hi Emlyn, I have the same issue, how did you go with your search? I want my Excel Map to pick up LGA data from my spreadsheet but not sure what to call the Header of that column? Any ideas?

Thanks Mike

[#5]

@mbowd1905 

Hi Emlyn, I will be trying "sa3_code" as my column header.  I note these are not necessarily "LGA" but it will do me. Excel maps the location areas when I use those codes. I've used the sa3 codes from the following fine piece of work.

https://www.kaggle.com/therohk/australia-sa2-codes-browser?select=sa2_2016_aust_csv.zip

Cheers Mike

[#6]

@ebreese @Ingeborg Hawighorst
I've just run into a similar problem mapping to Western Australian postcode data. It just fails to recognise some postcodes and suburb names. It looks like a great tool, but needs to be polished before it is of any use. I've had a look at the mapping features in R, but no one yet has generated (or made available) vector graphs of LGAs, suburbs, postcodes, or even states.