InstaMaps
Workflows / Nearby places

Nearby places from a Google Drive file to Google Sheets

What is around each address: the nearest pharmacy, station or supermarket, or how many cafés are within a kilometre. Ask your AI in plain English: it reads a Google Drive file, InstaMaps does the location work, and the results land in Google Sheets.

Google Drive file
InstaMapsInstaMaps
Nearby places
Google Sheets
Works inClaudeChatGPTCopilotGemini
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Free connector · sign in with Google · about a minute

The prompt

Using the rows in this CSV or Excel file in my Google Drive: <link to the file>, find the nearest pharmacy to each address and how far away it is, and put the results in a new tab of this Google Sheet: <link to a sheet>.

Replace the parts in <angle brackets>.

What comes back

  • The nearest place of the kind you ask for, with its distance
  • Or a count of places within a radius
  • Anything that can't be placed or answered comes back with the reason. Nothing is dropped.

Set it up

Nearby places in Claude

Every plan, including Free. On Free, InstaMaps uses your one custom connector; Google Drive, Gmail and Google Calendar are directory connectors and don't count against it.

  1. In Claude, open Settings, then Connectors, and choose "Add custom connector".
  2. Name it InstaMaps and paste https://get-instamaps.com/mcp. Click Add.
  3. Click Connect and continue with Google. You land back in Claude, ready to ask.
  4. Paste the prompt above.
Claude's own guide ↗

Before you start

Reading a Google Drive file

Share the file with InstaMaps, or set it to "anyone with the link can view". InstaMaps reads it straight from Drive.

Writing to Google Sheets

InstaMaps writes to the sheet itself: share it with the address the answer gives you, as Editor. It adds new dated columns or a new tab, and never overwrites a cell.

Good to know

  • Great Britain and the US, from OpenStreetMap. Everyday amenities are well covered; trades are patchier.
  • The connector is free: 5,000 tool calls a day per person, and a whole sheet read by link counts as one call.

Related workflows

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