Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Exporting Google's "My Maps" as KML

I have been spending some time making Google Maps in "My Maps", such as this bike route down the Sakai river, then along the Shonan coast, and back home.

Some applications, like Google Earth, use KML data to represent map routes. There is an easy link now, in My Maps, to click and open the map directly in Google Earth. But if you need the KML data for importing elsewhere, you can save it this way:

First, in one of your maps in Google My Maps, copy the URL for "View In Google Earth" by right clicking the link and copying the URL. On a mac, it's "copy link location".

Then in a blank browser window, enter the URL in the address bar:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&output=nl&msid=103784915361440638280.00045507229fde71c84ca

Now change the output by switching output=nl to output=kml. Entering the URL will give an option to save. Save the KML file somewhere on your drive, and then you can import it elsewhere.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

does this still work for you?

Unknown said...

edit: IE 7 works, FF 3.0.5 not..

Rick Cogley said...

Thanks for reading, Dirk. I have not tried it lately but I appreciate you letting me know!

Unknown said...

Very useful! thanks - works with chrome

Rick Cogley said...

Glad to hear it, Joel. :-)

matt said...

Thanks for this, worked great. Exported 3 maps as KML and imported all three into a single, new My Map.

Rick Cogley said...

Glad to hear it, Matt. :-)

jikko said...

Thank you very much. At first i couldn't find the output=nl, so I decided to write "output=kml" in link and it works !!!

Just try only once.. I will repeat another time..

Thank you very much to comment on my reminder(I summarize all i learned about GPS in blog;-))

Anonymous said...

Can U help with creating multi objects KML? I mean few objects on map.

Rick Cogley said...

Hi myrivne -

I am afraid I have no idea on that, apologies, but thank you for stopping by!