# Marking a map with interesting places — Google, or other? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 31, 2021, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960 "2021-12-31T02:30:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/1 "2021-12-31T02:30:55Z")
Through the years as I’ve heard of or interesting places, I would put a pin on my Google map. I have over 1,000 places marked. But GMaps appears to have lost many of them. 4 pictures to follow. So, two questions: 1. What do you think happened here? See the pics to follow. 2. What is a good mapping tool to mark and not lose thousands of points? 4 pics to follow. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/2 "2021-12-31T02:31:10Z")
Northwestern hemisphere before. I had over 1,000 pins. [[Album] imgur.com ![](https://i.imgur.com/Fqgre7X.jpeg?fb "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/a/ebpIfSn) ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/3 "2021-12-31T02:31:24Z")
Northwestern hemisphere now. Many pins missing. [[Album] imgur.com ![](https://i.imgur.com/b3l61fQ.png?fb "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/a/vrtuqyV) ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/4 "2021-12-31T02:31:36Z")
Western North America before. Lots of pins. [[Album] imgur.com ![](https://i.imgur.com/4kqQZUU.png?fb "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/a/SCztbcO) ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/5 "2021-12-31T02:31:44Z")
Western North America now. Many pins missing. [[Album] imgur.com ![](https://i.imgur.com/aEs3ywz.png?fb "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/a/Tyhx69K) ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/6 "2021-12-31T02:37:20Z")
Instead of online, why not store them on your own hardware in Excel, with a USB backup for cheap to boot. Just get the lat/long of the location, and any other data points you want, such as name, description, date last visited, number of visits, who you were with, purpose of visit, etc. Really just anything that you might find interesting later. Then download Tableau Public (it’s free) and load in your spreadsheet as the data source. To save it, it’s public in theory, but it lets you do cool things such as putting the additional data in tooltips behind each pin. If having it in public scares you, but you want a printout for some reason, you could also just use a snipping tool to make a copy of the image. Worst case scenario is you never save the Tableau Workbook in any way and have to recreate from scratch each time you want to revisit it. Well, that will take you about 5 minutes or less. ---
**Author:** ![Kedikat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed655f/32.png) [@Kedikat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kedikat)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/7 "2021-12-31T02:43:01Z")
Only used it a tiny bit. But maybe Garmin Base Camp? Just a quick thoughtless reply. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/8 "2021-12-31T03:17:09Z")
Yeah @DMC, maybe a Google Sheets will be better. Or Excel as the primary list, and upload it to a Google Sheet as a backup. I had already gotten used to recording lat /long coords for many points. This may be the best way to go. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/9 "2021-12-31T03:18:01Z")
> [@Kedikat](#): > > Only used it a tiny bit. But maybe Garmin Base Camp? Just a quick thoughtless reply. Thanks for your input @Kedikat. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-a-map-with-interesting-places-google-or-other/956960/10 "2021-12-31T04:01:41Z")
To give you an idea of what it could look like, I created a fake data set as shown below and mapped them in Tableau Public. [Here is the resulting output](https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/dmc7541/viz/FakeTrips/FaketripsoftheDMC) and if you hover over a link, you’ll see how the tooltips might look. I even added an action to let you link to a photo gallery in the data. It took far longer to create the fake data than to do the Tableau work. | Latitude | Longitude | Name | Description | Date Visited | Went With | Comments | Would Recommend | Rating | Website | Photo Gallery | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 43.8791 | -103.4591 | Mt. Rushmore | Four fat heads surrounded by gold and is also a major shrine for two wheeled demons. | 8/14/2021 | George, Abe, Tommy, and Teddy | We should leave the head count at four, no matter what some orange dude wants | Yes | 4 | [Mount Rushmore National Memorial (U.S. National Park Service)](https://www.nps.gov/moru/index.htm) | [Photo Gallery (U.S. National Park Service)](https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery.htm?pg=3240960&id=F47518BA-155D-4519-3E3F35CAD0584ADE) | | 48.8584 | 2.2945 | Eiffel Tower | Lone surviving copy of the world’s largest availabvle ERECTOR set. | 2/14/2019 | Marcel Marceau | Maybe next time take my wife, as my travelling companion wasn’t very talkative | Yes | 4 | [The OFFICIAL Eiffel Tower website: tickets, news, info...](https://www.toureiffel.paris/en) | [High definition photographs of the Eiffel Tower in Paris - Page 1](https://www.eutouring.com/images_eiffel_tower.html) | | -13.1631 | -72.545 | Machu Picchu | A remote llama farm and former home of human sacrifice | 7/24/1911 | Harry Bingham | I saw dead people | Yes | 5 | [Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu - UNESCO World Heritage Centre](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/274/) | [Machu Picchu Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images](https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/machu-picchu) |