How to open Excel file on Mapinfo Professional 2015

On this Mapinfo Tutorial, I will show you how to open Microsoft Excel file into Mapinfo Professional. Mapinfo supports various file formats including MS Excel (.xls, .xlsx). We can load this data to Mapinfo for further use. 

For example, we have an Excel file with the following columns: 

As you can see, I have Easting, Northing columns on that file. This column will be used to map the data into Mapinfo as points. 

Steps to open Excel file on Mapinfo Professional

1. Open Mapinfo
2. Go to File | Open
3. Change the "File of Types" to Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
4. Navigate to your Excel file.

To display the data point in Mapinfo, follow these steps below.

Save the above GIF animated image if you want to save them locally for future use. Thank you for coming and I hope this tutorial will be useful for you to learn mapinfo.

Mapinfo Professional Supported File Formats

Mapinfo Professional supports various file formats including (but not limited) CSV, XLSX, XLS, MDB, ACCDB, Shapefile (SHP), JPG, PNG and many more. You can see the list of supported file formats from the file type on the Open File menu.

But, there are still many other formats that can be imported to Mapinfo using import/convert menu. For example GPX, Micromine data and string, Surpac string and many others. Mapinfo become even better when combined with Encom Discover. This is a must have add on for Mapinfo Professional. Many exploration or Mining industries have been using Mapinfo Professional with Discover. 

Mapinfo Tutorial-Create New Table

I would like to start the tutorial for Mapinfo Professional on this blog by showing how to create a new Table on Mapinfo. Mapinfo uses term "Table" for its files. So, we often called Mapinfo files as Mapinfo Table. Lets start the tutorial by creating a new table. 

Steps to create new Table on Mapinfo Professional

1. Open Mapinfo Professional
2. From File menu click New Table. A window will be open up. Check both Open New Browser and Open New Mapper. 

I will show you the difference between Browser and Mapper later. 

3. Click Create and next we will add some fields to our new table. 

Add some necessary fields to the new table. Don't forget to specify the Type and Width of each fields. 

4. Click Projection to choose the projection for our new Table

5. Select the projection and press OK.
6. Now press Create and specify the directory to save the new Table. After you save the Table, Mapinfo will automatically load or open the new Table. You will see two window opened for you. 

You may watch the following GIF image to see how to create new Mapinfo Table. 

Thank you.

Mapinfo Professional-User Interface introduction for new user

Mapinfo Professional is a great tool for GIS (Geographical Information System). It comes with many tools and features to produce maps with details, and spatial information. But if you are new to Mapinfo, you may need to refresh your mind. Here I will show you the main interface of Mapinfo Professional. I am using Mapinfo Professional 2015.0.1 on Windows 10. 

 The main window of Mapinfo Professional consists of several toolbox. 

• Menu (Located on the top of the main window)
• Toolbar 
• Layer Control
• Map Window

 

The Toolbar can be customised easily. We can turn on and off some toolbox by right click on the Toolbar area.

 For more options, you can open the Mapinfo Preferences via Options | Preferences

You can set many things here such as Units, Output Settings, Styles, Directories and some others. You may need to explore the Mapinfo Professional. 

Welcome to Mapinfo Tutorial Blog

Few years ago when I was starting to learn Mapinfo, it was hard to find good Mapinfo Tutorial on the internet. Now I am working on a Gold exploration company based in Indonesia. And I build this Mapinfo Tutorial blog to share my experience with other users who just started to use Mapinfo or anyone who wants to learn more about Mapinfo. 

I am not a Mapinfo expert, so the tutorial I write here would be so much general. But I will try to provide a deeper discussion on some sections. While Mapinfo Professional is a great tool for GIS works, there are also many GIS software that performs as good as it or even better. 

Welcome to my Mapinfo Tutorial blog.