Working with the Timemapper template

Timemapper generates the projects from a simple Google spreadsheet, therefore you have to:

• Add the data you want to present in a pre-prepared Timemapper Template.
• After you make a copy of this template, start adding your data.

The template is self-explanatory – in the second row there is an explanation of the meaning for each of the columns the tool understands. In fact, you don’t have to use all of the columns for a Timemap, only the Start date, the Title, a Description and the geographical coordinates for the map.

It’s useful to add data in these columns that are included in the template:

• Media where you can embed pictures, tweets, video from Vimeo, Youtube, etc. simply by copying their URL;
• Caption that explains the picture, video, tweet and gives context;
• Credit for the author or owner of the media;
• Web Page that can be generated also by copy pasting the url.
• End date of each event can be added to show the time span along with the descriptive
• Tags and
• Source of the added media or information.

When it comes to adding the Place and Location columns, which are generated as a graphical map in the final product, there is more than one way to do it. The location must be entered in the latitude, longitude format. If you have data that includes the city of Nassau in the Bahamas in it, the content of the Place column would be Nassau, Bahamas and for the Location column would need to be: 25.047984, -77.355413 for latitude and longitude.

1. One way to do this is by manually copy-pasting the latitude and longitude coordinates one by one in the Location_Original column. Of course, you would have to find them via some of the existing geocoding services (for example http://www.gps-coordinates.net/ or http://latlong.net). This means copying or typing the places or addresses one by one and finding their coordinates in latitude, longitude format so the mapping can work.
2. The second way is through the already included ImportXML formula in the Location column. The formula automatically determines the latitude and longitude of any given place or address in the Place column as shown in the picture below. The formula grabs the latitude and longitude data in precisely that format from an online geocoding service that recognizes the data you have in your data set.
3. The third way is for more advanced users and requires installation of Google App Script. For more info on the formula take a look at this blog post.