How to add and delete points markers

To create a locator map, go to datawrapper.de and click on "New Map" and then "Locator map." This will open the locator map creation pipeline. Four steps will lead you to your final map: 1: Add markers, 2: Design map, 3: Annotate, and 4: Publish. In this article, we will focus on adding point markers.

Add markers

In this first step, you will place markers on the map. To do so, you have three options: 

  1. Click on the blue "+Add" button. This will add a marker in the middle of your map. You can drag the marker symbol around to place it correctly. 
  2. Search for a country ("Nigeria"), city ("Shanghai"), or address in the search field. You can look for sights as well, e.g. "American Museum of Natural History" or "Loch Ness." 
  3. Type coordinates into the search field, like -34.8311808,19.992394. 
  4. Copy and paste a Google Maps URL into the search field. Sometimes, Google Maps will be better at finding locations than our tool, which uses OpenStreetMap information (mostly added by volunteers around the globe). You can search for a location in Google Maps and then copy and paste the URL into the Datawrapper search field. The following GIF shows what happens if you paste the URL  https://www.google.de/maps/place/Southernmost+Tip+Of+Africa/@-34.8305819,19.9871154,15z into our tool:
  5. Import your point markers (and also lines and areas) with a GeoJSON or CSV. To learn more about this setting, visit the articles "How to import point markers" and "How to import area and line markers."

    You will see all your added markers in a marker list below the search field.

Change the marker position

If you're not happy with the placement of your markers, you can always go directly into the map and drag the markers around. To do so, your mouse pointer needs to be on the map symbol (e.g. ⚫️), not the marker text.

If you want to change the precise coordinates of your marker, you can click on a marker in the marker list, then on "more options," and then change the latitude and longitude at the bottom of the panel (click on the numbers to change them). If you dragged the marker away from the original position, a "Reset" button will appear:

Hide, lock, or delete markers

You can hide, lock, or delete markers directly in the list of markers below the search field. Click on the eye to hide a marker on the map, and click on the eye again to make it visible again. Click on the lock symbol to make it impossible to change the marker position. And click on the red bin symbol to delete your marker for good:

Bring all your markers into the map view

Every time you add a marker to your map, the map will resize to bring all your markers into view. If you then move or zoom the map, your markers might be out of view. You can bring them back by clicking on "Fit map view to makers" below the marker list: 

After setting your markers, click on "Proceed" to go to the next step. There, we will choose a map style and make sure that our readers can navigate well on the map. We will cover this in an extra tutorial that you can find here.

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