Export your Locator Map markers & take them wherever you want

We at Datawrapper believe that your chart & map data should belong to you. We don’t want to lock your data. Normally, there’s no danger of that being the case: When you create a chart or a symbol/choropleth map, you upload the data – which means that you own the data already.

This is different in our locator maps. In locator maps, you don’t upload data – you create it by placing markers and highlighting regions.

It’s now possible to download this data as GeoJSON. To do so, go to step 4: Publish and click on “GEOJSON”:

What it includes

This will download a file with the file extension .geojson which contains everything spatial you put on top of your map: the markers you set, the lines & areas you imported and the highlighted regions you defined. The great thing: The GeoJSON includes the styling (fill, opacity, stroke, marker text etc.) of all markers, areas, lines & regions.

The GeoJSON file won’t include the underlying map, its native labels or the inset map, north arrow & scale bar.

You can open your freshly downloaded file with a text editor like Sublime Text or in a geographic information system tool like qGIS or geojson.io.

How to use the GeoJSON export to improve your maps

Yes, you can create a locator map with Datawrapper and then export the data to take it to another tool. For example, with the new export feature we give you a way to easily get your hands on a GeoJSON of an administrative region: Go to step 2, highlight a region and then export it in step 4:

But the new export feature also has the potential to make the locator maps that you create with Datawrapper better. Here are two ideas:

• Highlight multiple areas: So far, you can only highlight one region in step 2: Design map. With the new GeoJSON export, you can export that highlight, import it in step 1: Add markers and style it there. The highlighted region becomes an area marker and you can have as many as you like.
• Copy markers from one map into another: The new feature allows you to transfer markers between maps – e.g. for cases when you start creating two maps at the same time and then want to merge their markers. Simply export the GeoJSON from your first map and import them in step 1: Add markers in your second map.

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We hope you like the new feature – but as always, do let us know if you have feedback, suggestions or questions. We’re looking forward to hearing from you at support@datawrapper.de.