From Excel or CSV coordinates to EUDR GeoJSON

Most plot lists live in a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are good at lists and bad at geography: they round numbers, reorder rows, turn coordinates into text and save in encodings nobody else reads. Here is how to get a sheet into shape.

Layouts the converter understands

One row per plot (points). Columns for latitude and longitude, or a single column holding 5.324871, -4.377412. Suitable for plots of four hectares or less, each with an Area in hectares.

One row per corner (polygons). Rows sharing a plot ID are joined, in order, into one polygon. Keep the rows in the order the boundary was walked: sorting the sheet scrambles the shape into a figure eight.

WKT. A column containing POLYGON((-4.3774 5.3248, …)) is read directly.

Things spreadsheets do to coordinates

• Rounding. A column formatted to four decimals exports four decimals. The regulation's definition of geolocation calls for at least six (Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, Art. 2(28)).
• Decimal commas. A French or Portuguese Excel writes 5,324871 and separates columns with semicolons. The converter reads both.
• Degrees, minutes, seconds. 5°19'29.5"N is converted to decimal degrees. Hemisphere letters, including O for oeste, are understood.
• Latitude first. People type latitude first; GeoJSON wants longitude first (GeoJSON File Description, Definitions). The converter goes by column names, not order, but a sheet with swapped headers produces swapped plots.
• Text instead of numbers. Numbers stored as text in the Area column arrive as text, and the specification's example shows a quoted "3" becoming an area of 0 (GeoJSON File Description, Common errors 14). The checker offers to fix them.

The Area column

For a point, Area is the plot's size in hectares. Leave it out, and every point is treated as four hectares; put a value above four, and the Information System raises an error unless the commodity is cattle (Information System validation rules, Geolocation area for point). Check the units: square metres entered as hectares is the most common mistake we see in this column.