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Geodata files break in lots of subtle ways. A health check opens your file the same way mapping software does, looks for the most common problems, and tells you what’s wrong in normal language.

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How to do it

  1. Open the Health Check page.
  2. Drop a file onto the upload zone.
  3. Wait. Small files come back in seconds, large ones can take a minute or two. You’ll get a notification when it’s done.
You get back:
  • A score from 0 to 100. See How the score works.
  • Three stages of checks, each one marked passed, warning, or failing.
  • For anything fixable, a single Fix All button to auto-repair every affected entry.

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The three stages

The health check runs in three steps. Each stage decides whether the next one runs.

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1. Critical checks

These have to pass for anything else to matter. If any of them fails, your score is 0 and the next two stages are skipped, because the file isn’t usable at all. File contains entries. The file isn’t empty. If it is, there’s nothing to check. File opened cleanly. The format is intact and readable end to end. A broken zip, a truncated KML, or a Shapefile missing its .shx companion would fail here. Coordinate system. The file declares what part of the world its numbers refer to. See Coordinate systems explained for the longer version. If the file doesn’t declare one but its numbers look like normal longitude/latitude, we accept it as WGS84. If the numbers look like anything else (a local projection in meters, for example) and there’s no declaration, this fails. We cannot guess what coordinate system the file is supposed to be in.

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2. Valid versus invalid entries

For each entry in the file, we decide whether it can be used at all. An entry is invalid if it has one of these problems: Coordinates outside the world. Longitude has to stay between -180 and 180, latitude between -90 and 90. Anything outside means the file is in a different coordinate system that wasn’t declared, latitude and longitude got swapped, or there’s a typo. The map either refuses to draw the entry or shows it in the middle of the ocean.
Not fixable. We cannot guess what the right values should be. You need to check with the source.
Empty entries. Entries with a name and properties but nothing to draw on the map. They take up space in lists and exports without ever appearing.
Not fixable per entry, but Fix All drops empty entries from the cleaned copy.
Rows that didn’t parse. Some rows in the source file are too corrupt to load at all. They never make it into the dataset, but they still count against your total.
Not fixable. The source file needs to be re-exported.
You can download the valid entries and the invalid entries separately, each in the original file format, to inspect either set in your own tool.

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3. Fixable issues

For entries that made it into the valid bucket, we check for two problems we can repair automatically. Broken entries. The outline of the entry isn’t drawn cleanly. The lines might cross themselves (a “bowtie” polygon is the classic example), the points might be in a confusing order, or the pieces of a multi-part entry might not fit together. Usually caused by messy editing or a glitch during data import. Different mapping tools react differently. Some refuse to draw the entry. Some draw only part of it. Any area or length you measure from it cannot be trusted.
Fixable: yes. We straighten the entry automatically.
Unclosed outlines. A polygon ring where the first vertex isn’t the same as the last. Strict tools refuse to load it. Forgiving tools draw a weird half-shape. Area calculations come out wrong.
Fixable: yes. We append the starting vertex to close the ring.

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What happens next

If any entries are fixable, click Fix All to get a cleaned copy of your file. See Fix problems automatically for the details on what Fix All does.

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Plan limits

Health checks are 5 per month on the Free plan, unlimited on Pro and Team. The file-size limits are:
  • Free: files up to 1 MB
  • Pro: files up to 25 MB
  • Team: files up to 50 MB
See Plans & limits for everything else that varies by plan.