Add lat/lng to shapeFile

Question

I'm new to GIS. I have a shapefile (shp) that I need to add lat/lng coordinates too.

I used QGIS to open the file and selected:

Processing->ToolBox->QGIS geoalgorithms->Vector geometry tools->Extract nodes to add nodes to the file. I set the coordinate system to WG84G, when I go to add the $x coordinates I get output of 585292.76.

I believe it's the coordinate system not being correct but not sure which one I should be selecting.

Welcome to GIS.stackexchange. A few clarifying questions: 1) Is your shapefile of points only? 2) You want the x & y to be values in the attribute table? Why? 3) Why are you running extract nodes? 4) Where are you writing $x? If your coordinate system is 4326 your x & y should be in degrees https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/23690/is-wgs84-itself-a-coordinate-reference-system — raphael, Feb 07 '16 at 07:11

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 07 '16 at 08:06

2

Probably the CRS of your layer is not WGS84. First Save your layer using Save as ... from the popup menu of the layer, select WGS84 (EPSG:4326). After it in the new layer you will have latitude, longitude using $x and $y.

Be careful about the projection setting of your original layer. If it is false the result of Save as will be false too. You can see and change the projection setting of a layer in the layer properties dialog (General tab).

answered Feb 07 '16 at 08:06

Zoltan

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Thanks that worked, wasn't setting layer to WGS84. The last step you need to extract nodes and then was able to retrieve lat/lng. – TOD Feb 07 '16 at 18:31

Add lat/lng to shapeFile

1 Answers1