Working with Shapefiles

What is a Shapefile?

The ESRI Shapefile is one of the most widely used geospatial vector data formats. Despite its age, it remains the de facto standard for exchanging GIS data between organizations and software platforms.

File Structure

A Shapefile is actually a collection of related files that must be kept together:

• .shp — Geometry data (points, lines, polygons)
• .dbf — Attribute data in dBASE format
• .shx — Spatial index linking geometry to attributes
• .prj — Coordinate reference system definition (WKT format)
• .cpg — Character encoding specification (optional but recommended)

All component files must share the same base filename. When uploading to ConvertGeoData, upload all files together (or as a ZIP archive).

Known Limitations

• Field name length: Attribute names are limited to 10 characters. Longer names will be truncated during conversion.
• File size: Individual .shp and .dbf files are limited to 2 GB each.
• Single geometry type: Each Shapefile can only contain one geometry type (e.g., all polygons or all points, but not both).
• No date-time fields: The dBASE format only supports date fields, not full timestamps.
• No NULL values: Missing attribute values are stored as zeros or empty strings, not true NULLs.

Converting Shapefiles

ConvertGeoData handles all Shapefile complexity automatically. Upload your .shp file (along with companion files), and we'll detect the CRS from the .prj file, read encoding from the .cpg file, and convert to your chosen output format.

Popular conversions: Shapefile to GeoJSON, Shapefile to GeoPackage, Shapefile to KML.

Tips

• Always include the .prj file so CRS detection works correctly.
• If attribute names appear garbled, try specifying the character encoding (e.g., Windows-1252 for older European datasets).
• For datasets larger than 2 GB, consider converting to GeoPackage instead.