How to Convert UTM Coordinates to Lat/Long [Free Excel Sheet]

We get asked this a lot: how do you turn UTM coordinates into latitude and longitude so they can be dropped into xRouten, Google Maps or anything else that expects a normal pair of numbers? So we went looking, and the answer is a spreadsheet that does the whole thing for free.

Why lat/long in the first place

Any kind of route planning needs precise locations for the places you are driving to. Normally those are addresses, and the software converts them to latitude and longitude behind the scenes so they can be drawn on a map. Everyone has done this in Google Maps without thinking about it.

But what if the destination has no street address, because it is a tree in a park, a manhole cover or a bus shelter? Then you need coordinates.

The problem is that coordinates come in a lot of formats. Google Maps and every common mapping provider work in latitude and longitude — lat/lng. So it pays to have your coordinates in that format too.

If yours arrived in UTM, download this sheet.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Paste your UTM coordinates in and the matching lat/lng values come straight back out. Here is how it works.

How the sheet works

Converting UTM properly takes some unpleasant formulas and the right variables — the UTM zone and the hemisphere. Specialists at ArcGeek built an Excel sheet with all of the math already in it, laid out so that all you have to do is paste your coordinates in one side. It calculates the latitude and longitude and hands them back, ready to copy.

Under the ArcGeek logo on the left you will find the fields for those variables. Set the zone before you paste anything in — a value left over from a different region will give you a point in the wrong country, and the sheet will not warn you.

The continental United States spans UTM zones 10 through 19, running west to east:

Rough area	Zone
Washington, Oregon, California	10
Nevada, Idaho, most of Arizona	11
Utah, Montana, western Wyoming	12
Colorado, New Mexico, western Texas	13
Most of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska	14
Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana	15
Wisconsin, Illinois, Mississippi, Alabama	16
Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida	17
New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas	18
New England	19

Hemisphere is North for all of them. Alaska runs across zones 1 to 9, Hawaii is in zone 4 and 5.

One thing worth checking before you trust the output: whether your source data is NAD83 or WGS84. For most practical purposes the difference is around a meter, which does not matter if you are navigating a truck to a valve. It does matter for survey work.

With the zone set, type or paste your UTM eastings and northings straight into the sheet. It converts everything and shows lat and lng next to your originals. Copy them and save them wherever they need to go.

What if I have more coordinates than there are rows?

Extend the formula down:

Show all the hidden columns — double-click the divider on column G, repeatedly until nothing more appears
Select the last two or three rows
Double-click the corner of the selection, bottom right

Because those last rows are all part of the same calculation, the formula carries down to every row below. That gives you as many new rows as you need.

Getting the converted coordinates onto a map

Once they are converted you probably want to see them, edit them and attach information to them. Google My Maps and xRouten both do this in about a minute.

With Google My Maps

Plain Google Maps runs out of road when you have a lot of points at once. For that, Google built the free "My Maps" tool. It only takes addresses or latitude and longitude — which is exactly what you now have:

Copy your converted latitude and longitude into a new sheet and save it.
Open Google My Maps.
Click Create a new map at the top left.
Add a new layer.
Import the sheet from step 1.
Done.

You can edit the points on the map afterward. This guide covers that.

With xRouten

Everything the sheet produces can be imported into xRouten directly and shown on a map:

Copy the lat/lng values into a new sheet and put Lat and Lng in the first row. Add other columns if you want — Name or Note — to carry more information with each point.
Save the sheet.
Go to app.xrouten.de and sign in, or create a free account.
Click Import in the left-hand navigation, then the +.
If you only want the coordinates on the map and no routes built from them, set maximum number of routes to 0.
Click Import at the bottom right and wait a moment.
After the import, go to Overview and show Stops without a route.

You can also group the coordinates into routes and open them in our mobile app, which will navigate to each one — even when it is a tree in a park or a bus shelter.

Try it free and get your coordinates on a map.