This article is going to explore the different notation used for entering Latitude and Longitude coordinates to find places in Streets and Trips.   Sometimes you may need to convert the coordinates you have to the format that Streets and Trips understands.  This article will show you how to make the conversions using Google Earth.

Question: My Garmin says
N 36 degrees 37.458′
W 92 degrees 08.017′
The Garmin will get me right here to the entrance of this ranch.  But when I try to put it in Streets & Trips 2011, I keep getting an error each time.  I am trying to locate Cloud 9, Caulfield, MO.  Cloud 9 Ranch is a membership park in the Ozarks and we are planning some events involving Geocaching.  We want to be able to provide people with the correct coordinates for whatever device they are using.

Decimal or Degrees

Microsoft Streets and Trips recognizes two types of GPS Lat/Long notation: 1) Decimal or 2) Degrees/Minutes/Seconds.

1. Decimal:    36.624300° -92.133617°
2. Degrees/Minutes/Seconds: 36°37’27.48″N  92° 8’1.02″W

To enter the coordinates into Streets and Trips, you click on the Tools menu, Find, and click the Lat/Long tab.  You can enter the coordinates in either of the formats above, but Decimal is the simplest.  You don’t need the degree symbol – in fact, if you do include the degree symbol, you’ll get an error.  Just use numbers, decimal points and the minus sign to show a West longitude.  No symbols, no spaces.

If you need to enter Degrees/Minutes/Seconds – you can just enter the 3 sets of numbers, with no symbols.  You can separate the numbers with spaces, periods, or colons.  e.g. Latitude: 36 37 27.48  Longitude: -92 8 1.02

 

Degrees and Decimal Minutes

The problem with the coordinates from your Garmin is that they are neither Decimal, nor Degrees/Minutes/Seconds (DMS.)  They are a kind of hybrid, starting out with degrees (36) , but expressing minutes in a decimal (37.458), thus eliminating seconds.   If you try to put that into Streets and Trips, you’ll get an error.  Even if you strip out the characters that it doesn’t like.

 

Conversion of Lat/Long Notation with Google Earth

So you need to convert the coordinates given from your Garmin to the Decimal coordinates that Streets and Trips will understand.  There are several ways to do this.

1. You can probably find a setting on your Garmin to use the Decimal format
2. There are websites that do conversions.  But I couldn’t find one that included the Degrees and Decimal minutes format.
3. You can use Google Earth!

Google Earth is very flexible in the format of GPS Coordinates.

Enter the Degrees and Decimal minutes in the ‘Fly To’ field	and Google Earth flies straight to Cloud 9 Ranch.

To do the conversion in Google Earth, you need to do two things:

1. Create a placemark at the location
2. Change the display options to the desired Lat-Long format

Creating the Placemark is done with the Add menu, then click Placemark  (or you can use the Placemark button in the toolbar.)  When you create a Placemark, you see a dialog box open up where you can give the Placemark a name and you see the exact coordinates for the place.  You can drag the Placemark around and you will see the Lat Long numbers change; or you can edit the Lat Long numbers and you’ll see the Placemark move.

When you have the Placemark done, be sure to click OK to save it.  Now, you want to go into Google Earth Options and change it to Decimal Degrees.  Yours may already be set that way, in which case you would have seen the decimal notation in the Placemark dialog box already.  To look at the options, and change them if needed, click on Tools, Options and make sure you’re on the first tab – 3D View.  Notice that Google Earth has 4 choices!

 

Choose Decimal Degrees (or whichever one you need) and then click OK.

Now, if you right-click on the Placemark and choose Properties (or Get Info on Mac) it will open the dialog box back up and you’ll see the Latitude and Longitude in the new format.

You can repeat this process for as many different formats as you want!  Just change the options to whatever notation you want, and then take a look at the properties of the Placemark to see the converted coordinates.

Geeks on Tour Members should watch the following video lessons:

1. sttr02.Places in Streets and Trips
2. gear05.Google Earth Latitudes and Longitudes

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