How to Map Locations in Excel with 3D Maps (39,000 McDonald's Stores)

Excel has a hidden 3D globe, and almost nobody uses it.

In this video we take a raw CSV of 39,000 McDonald’s locations and plot every
single one on an interactive world map — then explore it, colour it by category,
switch to a heat map, and animate it over time.

The same technique works for store networks, sales territories, delivery routes,
customer locations, anything with a latitude and longitude.

So grab your fries, and let’s get mapping. 🍟

Watch: 3D Maps in 7 minutes

Prefer reading? The same steps are written out below the video.

Step-by-step

Excel’s 3D Maps plots thousands of locations on an interactive globe. The example maps every McDonald’s store in the world, about 39,000 rows from a public Kaggle data set, using each store’s latitude and longitude.

1. Import the CSV

In a blank workbook, go to Data > Get Data > From File > From Text/CSV, choose the file and click Load. Excel loads it as a table.

2. Keep only the columns you need

Delete columns you won’t map, such as store ID, phone number and opening hours. Keep country, city, address, postcode, latitude and longitude.

3. Open 3D Maps

Click inside the table, press Ctrl+A, and go to Insert > 3D Map > Open 3D Maps. A new window opens and Excel plots the stores using the latitude and longitude columns.

4. Explore the globe

Scroll to zoom and drag to rotate, or use the on-screen arrows to tilt. Turn Map Labels on to show country and city names, and try the Themes gallery for satellite or dark globe styles.

5. Style the layer

In the Layer Pane, check the Location fields (latitude and longitude for exact points, or country to summarise by country). Under Layer Options, adjust the opacity and colour. Drag country into Category to colour the points by country.

6. Switch to a heat map

Change the visualisation type to Heat Map to see where stores are most concentrated, with hot spots around cities such as New York, London and Tokyo.

7. Animate over time (optional)

If your data has a date, such as an opening date, drag it into the Time box. A timeline appears and Play animates the map, perfect for showing growth over the years.

Go further

My Excel Power Query, Power Pivot, DAX & Power 3D Map course covers 3D Maps, Power Query and data models in depth.