MapForums

About a month ago, Google released integration between Google Earth and Google Spreadsheets. Then, they release Google Spreadsheet Mapper to make it official. Very cool idea. We had native integration between MapPoint 200x and Microsoft Office Excel, but no one had done much to pull Virtual Earth and Excel together. Actually, IDV Solutions', Ian Clemens wrote "Connecting Excel Spreadsheets and Virtual Earth" like a couple days after Google announced their integration, but Microsoft didn't do anything official. Well, that's changed; at least, for developers.

We've just published "Integrating Virtual Earth Maps and Excel 2007 Using Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition" on MSDN as a two part article. Part 1 is summarized as, "Develop and implement a business intelligence application quickly with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools Second Edition for the 2007 Microsoft Office System, Virtual Earth Map Control 6.0, and Microsoft Office Excel 2007. (28 printed pages)."

Part 2: Integrating Virtual Earth Maps and Excel 2007 Using Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition (Part 2 of 2) is summarized as "a two-part series. Learn how to add data to a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 worksheet using automation to format cells as well as create charts and send data for pushpins on the map and export charts images. (43 printed pages)." You can download the code samples from MSDN too - Integrating Virtual Earth Maps and Excel 2007 Using Visual Studio. That's a little novella. 

So, if you're a developer looking to integrate Virtual Earth and Microsoft Office Excel you should take a gander at this article as this will help visualize your data like you've never seen before. Also, there will be some nice integration points between SQL Server 2008 and Excel which you can then publish to Virtual Earth (again, if you're a developer). Although, perhaps an Excel developer will create an add-in that we can just export to Virtual Earth or Live Search Maps? Users, ask your IT folks to get this hooked up for you - pri 1..

And, for those of you using Google Spreadsheet Mapper, you can take those KML files you've created and use them in Virtual Earth natively to visualize your data in our higher resolution ortho and oblique (Bird's Eye) photography and our in browser 3D experience. We support KML in both Live Search Maps and Virtual Earth. Huge ups to the folks at Advaiya, Inc. for authoring this.

CP