Excel Geography Data changes New Mexico to American Truck Simulator: New Mexico

Excel’s Geography data type is a linked data type that pulls location information from an online source. When text such as “New Mexico” is converted, Excel attempts to match it to the closest entity in that online geography service. In this case, the service is incorrectly resolving “New Mexico” to “American Truck Simulator: New Mexico” while still returning Santa Fe as the capital, which is a data-quality issue in the backing service rather than in the workbook itself.

Because the Geography data type is entirely driven by that online source, there is no setting in Excel to correct or override that specific label while still using the linked data type. For a professional-looking table while this issue persists, the practical workarounds are:

1. Keep a plain-text column for display
   • In one column, keep the text “New Mexico” as plain text (do not convert it to Geography).
   • In a separate column, convert the same text to the Geography data type and use that column only to pull fields such as capital, population, etc.
   • Use the plain-text column in tables, charts, or reports where the label must read exactly “New Mexico.”
2. Manually override the label after extraction
   • If the Geography data type is already applied and the label shows as “American Truck Simulator: New Mexico,” create another column with a formula such as:
     • =IF([@GeographyLabel]="American Truck Simulator: New Mexico","New Mexico",[@GeographyLabel])
   • Use this corrected column as the visible label in your table.
3. Use a static (non-linked) copy for final outputs
   • Once the correct data (capital, population, etc.) is pulled from the Geography data type, copy and paste values into a separate, static table where the state name is typed manually as “New Mexico.”
   • Use this static table for any printed or shared reports.

Geography linked data types are designed to be refreshed from the online source (right-click a cell with the data type and select Data Type > Refresh), so once the underlying service is corrected, future refreshes should show the proper name automatically.

References:

• Excel data types: Stocks and geography
• Get geographic location data in Excel