Converting UTM coordinates to shapefile in QGIS

Question

I have an excel sheet with UTM coordinates (Easting and Northing) for four points. I want to create a shapefile (rectangle) in QGIS, but am very new to the program and following all the guides I can't seem to get it to work.

I have converted the excel spreadsheet to a Tab Delimited Text file, and gone on to QGIS and gone on to "Add a delimited text layer". I have imported the .txt file, changed the file format to 'custom delimiters', where it is checked on 'tab'. But the issue comes when I try to set the x and y coordinates. I can see in the sample data box at the bottom that it has not imported my .txt file as a table at all (which is how it is appearing on all the tutorials). So as there no longer two columns with my x and y data, it will not let me set the correct titles to allocate the x and y data. I can see that certain tabs have also merged when converted to a .txt i.e. it is combining one of my coordinates with the tab title to the left of it.

I was then going to use the delimited text layer created, and then convert it to a shapefile from there. Would this be correct?

Sorry if this is a very simple question or is not very clear, I am very new to QGIS and mapping.

Answer 1

You could check out this tutorial which provide you with an approach in Importing Spreadsheets or CSV files¶

Steps:

Examine your tabular data source. To import this data to QGIS, you will have to save it as a text file and need at least 2 columns which contain the X and Y coordinates. If you have a spreadsheet, use Save As function in your program to save it as a Tab Delimited File or a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file.

Open QGIS. Click on Layers ‣ Add Delimited Text Layer.

In the Create a Layer from a Delimited Text File dialog, click on Browse and specify the path to the text file you downloaded. In the File format section, select Custom delimiters and check Tab. The Geometry definition secction will be auto-populated if it finds a suitable X and Y coordinate fields. In our case they are LONGITUDE and LATITUDE. You may change it if the import selects the wrong fields. Click OK.

You may see some errors displayed in the next dialog. The erros in this file are mainly due to missing X or Y fields. You may examine these errors and fix the problems in your source file. You may ignore these errors as a beginner in your case.

Coordinate Reference System Selector will ask you to select a coordinate reference system. Since the earthquake coordinates are in latitudes and longitudes, you should select WGS 84. Click OK.

You will now see that the data will be imported and displayed in the QGIS canvas.

Answer 2

Per the documentation @whyzar included in their answer, either .txt or .csv should work, but if the .txt file is not reading properly in QGIS, try saving your Excel file to .csv (comma separated values) instead.