UTM lat,long bulk converters

Overview

We measure geographic coordinates on the Earth's surface several ways. Among the most useful of these are latitude and longitude (lat,long) and Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM). This page provides converters to convert one to the other.

These converters convert many sets of coordinates at a time. The typical use case is that the coordinates are records in a spreadsheet with latitude and longitude (or UTM zone, easting, and northing) in separate columns along with other data associated with those coordinates in still other columns.

Isolating the columns containing the coordinates (maybe by copy/pasting to a blank spreadsheet and deleting everything else) and exporting the result in comma separated variable (CSV) format gives a text file, the contents of which can be pasted directly into the input of these converters. After conversion, the output is records of the coordinates in the target format in comma separated format that can be copy/pasted into a text file to be imported into a spreadsheet for further manipulation.

Conversion assumes ellipsoid WGS-84.

Convert lat,long to UTM

Input: Input data is records of the form id,lat,long

• id is some reference for matching records in the input with those in the output. It could be a number or any arbitrary text except commas, not necessarily unique. The converter does nothing with this other than repeat it to the output.
• lat is the latitude in decimal degrees (negative for south).
• long is the longitude in decimal degrees (negative for west).

Note that if the input records contain more than three comma separated fields, the converter ignores anything to the right of long.

A realistic input might be:

Output: Output data is of the form id,lat,long,zone,east,north

• id is the same reference id repeated record-for-record from the input.
• lat is the latitude in decimal degrees repeated record-for-record from the input.
• long is the longitude in decimal degrees repeated record-for-record from the input.
• zone is the UTM zone corresponding to lat,long.
• east is the UTM easting corresponding to lat,long.
• north is the UTM northing corresponding to lat,long.

Note that the converter inserts this explanatory field line in the output before the first converted record: id,lat,long,zone,east,north.

The output corresponding to the input example would be:

Output accuracy is within 1 m for easting and northing.

Convert lat,long to UTM application, new window

Range checking: The lat parameter must be between +84 and -80 degrees and the long parameter must be in the range ±180 degrees. If not, then following changes appear in the output for the record containing the out-of-range parameter(s):

• the id inherits a "*" prefix
• the lat or long out of range becomes 0.00000
• the UTM zone becomes "xx"
• the UTM east and north become "0"

In the following input, the latitude in the first record and the longitude in the second record are out of range.

The corresponding output would be:

Convert lat,long to UTM application, new window

Convert UTM to lat,long

Input: Input data is records of the form id,zone,east,north

• id is some reference for matching records in the input with those in the output. It could be a number or any arbitrary text except commas, not necessarily unique. The converter does nothing with this other than repeat it to the output.
• zone is the UTM zone, e.g., 8V for Whitehorse, YT. See UTM zone map.
• east is the UTM easting, six digits
• north is the UTM northing, seven digits

Note that if the input records contain more than four comma separated fields, the converter ignores anything to the right of north.

A realistic input might be:

Output: Output data is of the form id,zone,east,north,lat,long

• id is the same reference id repeated record-for-record from the input
• zone is the UTM zone repeated record-for-record from the input
• east is the UTM easting repeated record-for-record from the input
• north is the UTM northing repeated record-for-record from the input
• lat is the latitude in decimal degrees (negative for south) corresponding to zone,east,north
• long is the longitude in decimal degrees (negative for west) corresponding to zone,east,north

Note that the converter inserts this explanatory field line in the output before the first converted record: id,zone,east,north,lat,long.

The output corresponding to the input example would be:

Output accuracy is within 0.00001 degree for latitude and longitude.

Convert UTM to lat,long application, new window

Range checking: The UTM zone is of the form nx where n is one or two digits that together must be in the range 1–60 and x is a letter that must be in the range C–X. If the zone is outside these ranges, then the following changes appear in the output record containing the invalid zone:

• the id inherits a "*" prefix
• the UTM zone becomes "xx"
• the lat and long become 0.00000

In the following input, the zones in the first two records are invalid.

The corresponding output would be:

Convert UTM to lat,long application, new window

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