# Converting Eastings and Northings to Latitude and Longitude in Alteryx

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2021-12-06
- **Format:** Video · 6 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data prep, Data visualisation
- **Tools:** Alteryx (create points, spatial, spatial info); Tableau
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/converting-eastings-and-northings-to-latitude-and-longitude-in-alteryx
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_A4-AatI5w

I show how I converted UK eastings and northings into latitude and longitude using Alteryx, building a workflow from scratch with the spatial tools. I cover creating points with the correct British National Grid projection, checking the output visually, and exporting a Tableau hyper extract.

## Key takeaways

- Use the Create Points spatial tool in Alteryx to turn easting and northing fields into a spatial point object
- Set the correct projection (British National Grid OSGB 1936, EPSG code 27700) rather than relying on the default latitude/longitude, and look up codes at epsg.io
- Add a Browse tool to visually verify your points, which makes it easy to spot if easting/northing or longitude/latitude are swapped
- Use the Spatial Info tool to extract the centroid as x and y fields, giving portable latitude and longitude for use in other tools
- Doing the conversion in Alteryx and outputting a hyper extract runs near-instantly and is faster than converting at scale inside Tableau

## Chapters

- 0:00 Why convert eastings and northings
- 0:27 Connecting data and the Create Points tool
- 2:13 Setting the British National Grid projection
- 2:55 Checking output and fixing swapped fields
- 3:38 Extracting latitude and longitude with Spatial Info
- 4:35 Outputting a Tableau hyper extract

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/converting-eastings-and-northings-to-latitude-and-longitude-in-alteryx

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena