Finding UK TopoJSON Maps for Power BI Shape Maps

As a break from writing a chapter for our new Advanced Power BI course, I thought I'd put in one place the most useful links I've found for TopoJSON maps.

Postcode Boundaries

I got these from Open Door Logistics.  You can right-click to download a list of either postcode areas or districts:

Right-click on either Areas or Districts.

Here are the shape map keys that the two options give:

Areas	Districts

I used this to create this map:

Total sales by postcode area.

It's not a map, but I also found this list of postcode areas useful. 

UK Counties

You can get a list of the UK counties from David Eldersveld's GitHub site for TopoJSON files:

You must be on the top-level project to see the download option shown.

When you unzip the files, you should see one called uk-counties.json in an obvious folder.  When you download this and set it as the source for a shape map visual, you'll see these keys:

The start of the shape map keys for counties in this map file.

Here's what the counties map looks like in Power BI before you show any data:

The shape map as it first appears in Power BI using the downloaded TopoJSON file.

Parliamentary Boundaries and Local Authority Districts

Martin Chorley maintains a list of UK maps here:

You can choose the level of detail for the map you want to download.

You can then right-click on the link to download your choice:

Right-click to download the shape file you've chosen.

The keys for the map above are less useful:

You'll have to work hard to get your data assigned to the correct keys.

Here's the map above in Power BI, before any data has been displayed:

The maps show up with the correct boundaries in Power BI.