Migrating to G Suite: Maps

I’m a big fan of creating custom Google Maps – been doing it for years. My wife and I have found that it’s a great way to collect our mutual research when getting ready to visit a new place.

I don’t want to lose all of that research, so I was definitely interested in getting my custom maps (which can be found at mymaps.google.com) moved over from my personal Google account to my G Suite one.

Now, the first thing to be aware of is that creating a custom GMap results in a map file on the root level of the Google account’s GDrive – you can move those files into sub-folders on the same account and MyMaps will still see them.

As for exporting your existing custom maps, you can do it either from the map itself:

or as part of a Google Takeout archive. Unfortunately, both methods result in .kmz files and, though Google says you can import those, I was never able to successfully do it without getting an error message.

So here’s what I did:

1. Make sure you’re signed in to Google with your “source” account and go to mymaps.google.com
2. Open each map and use the sharing capability to share each map with the G Suite account
3. Now sign in to to My Maps using the “destination” account (your G Suite one) – you should see every map under the “Shared” tab
4. Create a copy of each shared map using the “Copy” command
   
5. Finally, go back to the source account and either delete the maps there or un-share them with your G Suite account – that will get the (now) duplicates to disappear from your G Suite account