Importing data from GIS shapefiles, with labels
The training website (https://training.caltopo.com/all_users/import-export/other-programs#exportdata) doesn't address how to import GIS data and retain important label information for newly created map objects. Simply exporting shapefiles as .kml or .geojson files without some careful thought strips out the labels.
To retain labelling, make sure that the shapefile has a field name called "Name", and that it contains the label you want Caltopo’s map object to retain. Caltopo will only use this field to label map objects upon import. Then export the shapefile as a .kml file.
Open Caltopo.com desktop app and use the Import tool (in the lefthand column, under Map Objects) to import your .kml file. The Import Data window should show, and properly label, the map objects you would like to import. If the labels look correct, click the Import button to import them into Caltopo. The result should be new map objects listed on the lefthand side, using the labels you wanted.
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Adding a note for GeoJSON file imports. CalTopo will attempt to pull from the shape file name from the field "title". It's possible to rename the label field from exports from other apps in a text editor to retain the shape file labels in CalTopo.
For example (field of interest emphasized in bold):
BLM ESRI GIS GeoJSON export snippet
Edit for CalTopo import
A trick for retaining information from both a Name and Description fields while trying to export shapefiles to Caltopo.
I had a shapefile with Name and Description (254 char) fields, both of which had data in all records (I'm using QGIS 3.40.4-Bratislava on a Win 11 PC). When I exported that shapefile as a .kml file , the new .kml file contained all of the shapefile fields (and their data), plus a bunch of other hew fields such as "description", "timestamp", "begin", "end", etc. Except for the Name field, all of these new fields were essentially blank, including the newly added .kml "description" field. The data in the Name field matched my original shapefile. If you just leave it at that for your Caltopo import, you've already lost the description data at this point. However, while still in QGIS, I simply copied all of the data from my original "Description" field to the new .kml "description" field. After saving that file (as .kml), I imported it into Caltopo. Although the Caltopo "Import Data" window only listed the Names of each feature, after import I saw that the newly added objects retained both the Name and Description information. Yay!
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