Unable to replicate 'Planning a vacation....' setup [result: had to put a dummy property location, to force plugin to read pasted geo: values]

[claremacrae]

Hi,

I have been trying to implement the setup described in your article:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/xi42pt/planning_a_vacation_with_map_view/

Having not successfully got the locations to display in my own main vault, I thought I would try and set it up in a minimal one.

I can't work out if:

1. I'm not following the docs and article correctly
2. Something has changed since the article was written.

I would really appreciate any pointers, please - as I actively am trying to use this for planning a holiday.

Debug Info

SYSTEM INFO:
	Obsidian version: 1.12.7
	Installer version: 1.12.6
	Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 25.2.0: Tue Nov 18 21:09:56 PST 2025; root:xnu-12377.61.12~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6041 25.2.0
	Login status: logged in
	Language: en-GB
	Catalyst license: vip
	Insider build toggle: on
	Live preview: off
	Base theme: light
	Community theme: none
	Snippets enabled: 1
	Restricted mode: off
	Plugins installed: 1
	Plugins enabled: 1
		1: Map View v6.1.4

What I've done - try using geo in note

1. Copied the 'London 2022 Food' markdown from the article

## Best Vegan Restaurants
- [Holy Carrot](geo:51.4992203,-0.1601454)
- [All Nations Vegan House](geo:51.5496703,-0.07431190000000001) - sounds very special
- [Unity Diner](geo:51.51684540000001,-0.0736917)
- [Lele's](geo:51.5516454,-0.0516837) - vegan pastries and cakes
- [Gauthier](geo:51.5127566,-0.1314549) - the first Michelin-starred venue with a vegan tastings menu
...
## Pizza with Vegan Options
- [Tank & Paddle](geo:51.5109443,-0.0809249) tag:food/pizza
    - [Tank & Paddle](geo:51.5207722,-0.0790765) tag:food/pizza
- [Pizza Pilgrim](geo:51.5149341,-0.1332274) tag:food/pizza
- [Pizza Pilgrims](geo:51.5116021,-0.1267416) tag:food/pizza
...

#food

(Above code block corrected - the links were previously borked by Copy-in-Obsidian-Source-Mode-then-Paste-in-GitHub being broken for recent Obsidian versions...)

2. Added marker rules that I think replicate the ones in your screenshot
   

3. Added my OpenStreetmap email address

   This does work in my main vault, for locations in Frontmatter properties.

4. Run the 'Open Map View' command

   No map locations are displayed.

   I was going to set up following active note later - once I've at least got it displaying the locations.

Result with only geo links

Test with Frontmatter location

I decided to see if map rendering was working at all.

So I tried this note:

---
location: 51.5008349,-0.1430045
---

Map with Frontmatter location

This displays fine.

Sample vault

Here is the sample vault.

Note that I changed the OSM email address for privacy - but I did have a working one

Empty.zip

[claremacrae]

At some point I did get a message in my main vault along the lines of 'updating note with frontmatter to indicate it contains locations' - but the file was not updated.

I wonder if that might be the issue. It's not mentioned in the article however.

[esm7]

First, for some reason the link format in your example is garbled; you have links in the format of:

- [[Holy Carrot](geo:51.4992203,-0.1601454)](geo:51.4992203,-0.1601454)

And it should be:

[Holy Carrot](geo:51.4992203,-0.1601454)

Not sure how it reached this state!

Second, it seems like Map View did not detect the fact you pasted links into the note -- I'm actually not sure it knows how to do that properly for a group of links, gotta check that out!
So it probably did not automatically update the front matter to denote there are inline links in the note (as you wrote, the message popped, but the file was updated), so just add an empty locations property to the file and you should be good to go, literally :)

[claremacrae]

First, for some reason the link format in your example is garbled; you have links in the format of:

I've just actually fixed that - it's an Obsidian annoyance that they claim is a GitHub bug.

so just add an empty locations property to the file and you should be good to go, literally :)

It worked, thank you. This has cost me many hours - could you please at least put a note in your article in neon yellow saying "if you copy these examples, this is how to make them work?"

[esm7]

Late addition: I went ahead and opened the zip file you attached, and over there the links are fine; Somehow they got garbled in your message but not in the vault.
All you're missing in the "London 2022 food.md" file is the empty locations property, which is required for notes that have inline geolocations. Map View usually adds it automatically, but not in the flow of pasting a whole block of text. Good thing to add!
I recommend to read at least the "location formats" page in the documentation to get a sense of why it works this way: https://esm7.github.io/obsidian-map-view/location-formats.html

[esm7]

It worked, thank you. This has cost me many hours - could you please at least put a note in your article in neon yellow saying "if you copy these examples, this is how to make them work?"

That's important, will do.
Generally I should make an updated post (it's about 4 years old and lots of capabilities were added since then), but should definitely prevent others falling into that trap in the old post too, thank you!

[claremacrae]

All you're missing in the "London 2022 food.md" file is the empty locations property, which is required for notes that have inline geolocations. Map View usually adds it automatically, but not in the flow of pasting a whole block of text. Good thing to add!

Indeed, I'm in business now!

I recommend to read at least the "location formats" page in the documentation to get a sense of why it works this way: https://esm7.github.io/obsidian-map-view/location-formats.html

Thanks for the link.

The page I had looked at was this one, and it seemed to me that what I had pasted was consistent with those instructions:

https://esm7.github.io/obsidian-map-view/adding-locations.html

[esm7]

For starters, I updated the original Reddit post.
Would you mind helping me investigate if you might have run into a bug in automatically adding the locations property?

1. If you create a new note, use the "add inline geolocation link", type a link name and press Enter on a suggestion, when the link completes, is the locations property added to the note?
2. What about when you copy an inline geolocation like the ones you have above, and paste it into a new note?

If one of these fail, can you check if there might be hints in the developer console?

[claremacrae]

For starters, I updated the original Reddit post.

Great - adding that frontmatter section to the example markdown is perfect - thank you.

Would you mind helping me investigate if you might have run into a bug in automatically adding the locations property?

Of course, no problem...

1. If you create a new note, use the "add inline geolocation link", type a link name and press Enter on a suggestion, when the link completes, is the locations property added to the note?

Yes it does.

2. What about when you copy an inline geolocation like the ones you have above, and paste it into a new note?

If I do a simple Paste - Cmd + V - it does add the locations property.

However, I often find that pasting in to Obsidian from other apps puts stray extra spaces at the end of lines.

So I generally do Paste and Match Style - Shift + Cmd + V in cases where there is no formatting to copy - and I found that this does not add the locations property.