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I have a KMZ-file with polygons that I want to edit in QGIS. When I open it in Google Earth it has some attributes, when I open it in QGIS the attributes disappears or look different. How do I get the same attribute in QGIS as in Google Earth?

I have tried converting the KMX to KML and GeoJSON but still the same result. I also tried unzipping the KMZ to KML and saving the KMZ as KML in Google Earth, but nothing helped.

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  • Can you share test data?
    – user30184
    Nov 8, 2021 at 10:38
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    You might be interested in KML Tools plugin. It has Expand HTML description field function.
    – Kazuhito
    Nov 8, 2021 at 10:40
  • Aha. The KML Tool did the job. Thanks :-)
    – Lofoten
    Nov 8, 2021 at 12:20

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This issue is because the "attributes" you see in the balloon are not actually stored as individual attributes in the KML, but rather the whole table of data is stored as a single HTML blob in the KML description field. This is very poor practice in KML generation, and unfortunately it's the default way that many GIS packages (ESRI/ArcGIS, etc.) generate KML, making it very hard to convert back to other formats with individual attributes.

As suggested in the comments, using KML Tools to "Expand HTML description field" is a useful way to parse out the attributes, assuming the HTML uses a common structure.

If this is a KML that you or someone you work with is generating, consider changing how it's generated and use best practices with attributes stored individually in KML Extended Data fields.

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