Anyone know how to turn an excel spreadsheet into an import file for map icons?

[SMCA]

I'm trying to generate a map showing members locations across a country. 

I don't want to manually place each icon as the membership list updates reguarly but when I created a map in google maps it asked me to:

Import KMLAdd map data from a KML, KMZ, or GeoRSS file to this map. This may take a few minutes depending on the speed of your internet connection.  

As I have no idea how to turn my excel file into a KML, KMZ or GeoRSS file and a quick google search didn't turn up any obvious explanations I've reverted to another package. http://batchgeo.com/

Which let me generate the following map from the attached example membership file...

http://batchgeo.com/map/38bc347c66efd52780665a222a2b5c6c 

Now, I'd still like to be able to work out how to do this with Google Maps - so if anyone can explain how to do it simply I'd like to have a go!. 

There seem to be several discussions about importing once you have a KML file... but for the non-techy person - I'd love to know what one is in the first place and where to start. 

Kind Regards,

Jo 

[Flash]

You are actually in the wrong spot, this is the forum for Map Maker, which is a tool to edit the base map.  What you are seeking is the Maps support site and forums.

I do know that what you need to use is a Fusion Table, but I am not hugely familiar with them so you'll have to experiment or go to the help files to figure out the fine details.

The basics are to have your spreadsheet in Google Drive, then within Drive click on Create->Other->Table.  Point it to your existing spreadsheet.  Once uploaded, click on Visualize->Map

Using your sample data, I ended up with the following map:  https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S593927JyAx

There are issues, as you can see; but I can already tell you that part of that will be do to you abbreviating your data to something that makes sense to you; but not necessarily to a computer.  Make sure to add a country column.  Don't abbreviate anything, South should not be S, Road should not be Rd, New South Wales should not be NSW, etc.  See if you get better results just by making those changes.

For greater details, head over to Fusion Tables support.