Shapefile to CSV Converter
Flattens a GIS Shapefile into a spreadsheet for analysis, pivoting, or loading into a BI tool.
Common issues converting Shapefile to CSV
- Polygons and lines collapse to a representative point (centroid / midpoint) in the lat/lng columns. Use WKT export to keep full geometry as text.
- DBF field name truncation happens upstream (10 characters). Those truncated names become your CSV headers — this has nothing to do with the converter.
- Legacy DBF encodings (CP1252, etc.) can produce mojibake. Re-export the shapefile with UTF-8 attribute encoding if your output has garbled accents.
- If the .prj is missing we assume WGS 84. Projected coordinates would otherwise appear as huge numbers in the lat/lng columns.
Frequently asked questions
How are polygons represented in the output?
As their centroid in the 'latitude' and 'longitude' columns. Use GeoJSON→CSV with WKT columns for full geometry preservation.
Are DBF attribute names truncated?
They're already truncated by the DBF format to 10 characters — that happened when the shapefile was created. The CSV inherits those truncated names.
What if my shapefile is in a projected CRS?
The .prj is used to reproject to WGS 84 before exporting lat/lng. Without a .prj we assume WGS 84, which produces nonsense lat/lng values for projected data.
Does the output handle non-ASCII characters?
Yes, the output is UTF-8 with a BOM. If your output has garbled characters, the shapefile's DBF was in a non-UTF-8 encoding — re-export with UTF-8.