Hello,

I am new to this software, but it looks ideal for the work I do.

Hope someone can help.

I have been given a copy of Microsoft MapPoint North America 2011 by my IT department.

Why on earth they gave me a copy of N.America when we live in the UK is beyond me (perhaps got it on the cheap?)

either way, is there anyway of importing UK postcode data into the version I have? add-ins? data packs? anything like that?

I have lots of customer data (with UK postcodes) pulled from my SQL databases, but Im struggling to match it efficiently in MapPoint.


Can anyone guide a newbie in the right direction?

New user tips are also welcome

Thanks in advance,

Mike.

I'd really recommend to get the European version of MapPoint 2011. It will have the UK postal codes and much more built in. You will have roads, be able to do address lookups and import address lists, do drive time polygons, etc.

If you obtain a UK postal code database with lat/lon, you could import and do some limited analysis, mostly through programming, but I don't know where to point you to buy this UK postal code list, but I understand data is fairly expensive in the UK so I wouldn't be surprised if the UK postal code list itself is many more times the cost of MapPoint 2011 EU.

So I think your best bet would just be to get MapPoint 2011 EU.

Sorry if this is not the answer you were hoping for but is probably what you expected ?

Eric

Exactly the answer I thought I would get.

Quite bewildering as to why they purchased a N.America version. :\

I have emailed them already and asked for a EU version.


thanks for your reply!

right,

In the short term, how difficult is it to import a .CSV file with ALL UK postcodes with lon/lat, easting, northing & Grid reference??

any ideas?

That should be really easy. Just specify you are using lat/lon to match to the map.

Maybe just try 100 records first to make sure it's working.

Also, it might help to import into Excel first to make sure all the columns line up.

Let us know how it goes!

Eric

Ahh, What I mean is;

I have a customer file that I want to import into MapPoint.

This excel file contains about 900 entries with the following headers:

CUSTOMER NAME POSTCODE


referring back to my initial problem of not having UK postcodes, I managed to find a full list of UK postcodes with long/lat in CSV format.

How can I put this newly aquired postcode data, into MapPoint, then import my excel file and have it correctly match/map the postcodes? with minimal manual matching?


OR,

would it be easier, to wait for IT to get me an EU version, and in the meantime,

use VLOOKUP in excel, and insert the long/lat into my excel file as extra columns, giving me headers of:

CUSTOMER NAME POSTCODE LONGITUTE LATITUDE


then match on the new columns?


Regards,

Mike.


Thanks for your help.

Ahh yeah, do this:

use VLOOKUP in excel

If you wanted to get a sense of how many customers per postal code by doing say a "sized circle" on top of each postcode instead of individual pushpins on top of each other, you could do a "group by" (or the Excel equivalent - a pivot table?) to get a count of customers per zip code and then import that list.

Then your list would look like this:

POSTCODE LONGITUTE LATITUDE CUSTOMERCOUNT

Then when you go through the Import Data Wizard you could do a sized circle map.

If you have different customer types or revenue per customer or amount of business per year you could get fancy with some of the other map options: pie charts, sized pies, bar and series charts, etc

So, to re-address your first question, I guess you might be able to do quite a bit with the NA version of MP with UK postal code (with lat/lon).

I agree

Most of the work I would use MP for would simply be, brand dealer location maps... highlighting areas of the UK where we have customer who are not brand dealers.

So we wont actually need much sales data.

Im a bit of an excel whizz, so I prefer using excel. Now I have a UK postcode reference file, I can simply amend my data to suit, before importing in MP, then it will produce the map I require.


Thanks Sir!

My pleasure, that's what we're here for!