HOW TO MAKE A TAB FILE FOR MAPINFO

BY: M. MOAZZAM TAHSIN

SPECIAL THANKS TO: TAIMOR AYAZ KHAN & FAHEEM AHSAN
Following things are required to make a TAB file for MAPINFO
1: An excel sheet which contains Cell name, LAT-LONG, Azimuth or Antenna direction of Sites

*Note (if you are using Cell-File for making a TAB file, First convert .Cel format to excel format i.e. xlsx)

2: MAPINFO Tools “SiteSee” (Included in the attachment)

3: MAPINFO software

Step 1
Open MAPINFO and a dialog box will appear, Click on Open table option and click open

Step 2
Select the destination of the excel file of which you want to make TAB file, and click open

E.g. I wanted to make TAB of “New112.xlsx”

1|P ag e
Step 3
A dialog box will appear, Check “Use row above selected region for column titles”

And click OK

2|P ag e
Step 4
A dialog box will appear showing all the columns in your excel file , Make sure by looking at the
columns that this is the file which you choose earlier

And click OK

Step 5
MAPINFO will display the file in form of a table

3|P ag e
Step 6
Now Minimize MapInfo go to MapInfo Tools folder (which is provided with the document)

And click on SitSee2.3.mbx

4|P ag e
Step 7
Now return to MAPINFO and Go to Table> WFI SiteSee>Create Site Boundries

Step 8
A window will appear which will show the main settings for you TAB file, make settings as follows

In Site Table: Name of the excel sheet will be showing which you choose earlier

In Site latitude from column: From the drop down menu Choose the column of your excel file which
contains the latitude of the sites, e.g. in my excel sheet I had a column name Latitude which contained
latitude of all sites

In Site longitude from column: From the drop down menu Choose the column of your excel file which
contains the longitude of the sites, e.g. in my excel sheet I had a column name longitude which
contained longitude of all sites

Site radius from column: This is size of each site, if you have radius of each site than select the column
from the drop down menu else check the box named “or use value” , entre “.2” and select “in Km”

*Note “.2” is the value which I prefer, you could chose a different value according to your requirement

5|P ag e
Beam Width from column: This is width of each sector of each site, if you have beam width of each
site than select the column from the drop down menu else check the box named “or use value” , entre
“40”

*Note “40” is the value which I prefer, you could chose a different value according to your requirement

Orientation From column: This is the azimuth of each sector of a Site, from the drop down menu
choose the column of excel sheet which contains the azimuth or orientation of each sector

And click OK

6|P ag e
Step 9
Choose the location where you want to save your TAB file and Name it,

E.g. I named it 3G

Step 10
Your TAB file is now ready

7|P ag e
Step 11
Click on the TAB file, and it will be displayed like this

8|P ag e