Ever wanted to measure the path length in Google Earth but could never find out how? Turns out, within Google Earth the ruler tool and the path tool are totally separate. You can’t measure a path within Google Earth unless you go through with the ruler and mark out your path again. BUT there is another way!

Here’s a step by step guide to marking out a path and then measuring it:

Creating your path

1. Go to Add > Path
   
   

   Adding a path

2. Enter in a name for your path (you can also add a description)
   
   

   Naming a path

3. Click the “Style, Color” tab and you can also change the colour of your path along with how thick the line is (can be useful when differentiating between paths you’ve created)
   
   

   Setting the path colour and width

4. I like to click OK after this just to make sure those settings are saved.
   
   

   Clicking OK!

Marking out your path

1. To mark out your path, you need to open that path property window again. To do this, go to the list of “My Places” on the left hand side and find your path:
   
   

   Finding the path you've created

2. Right click your path and go to “Properties”:
   
   

   Getting back to the properties window

3. This will bring up the properties window which appeared when you first created your path. Move this window away from the map (so you can see it and mark out spots) but don’t close that properties window. To mark out your path:
   1. Click on areas of the map to plot out your path (the latest bit of the path will appear as a blue dot, earlier parts of your path will appear as a red dot)
   2. To remove part of your path if you make a mistake, make sure the spot you want to remove is appearing as a blue dot (if it isn’t click the red dot to make it blue – this is the currently editable spot). Right click it now it is a blue dot and it will be removed. If you right click on a red dot, it will remove the dot marked blue, so you have to make sure the dot you want to remove is selected and blue (confused the crap out of me for a few moments)!
   3. Once you are done, click OK on the properties menu to save the path.

Measuring your path (updated on 7th September 2010)

Okay, so you’ve marked out your path and have it saved. The fun step now is to measure this path! Google Earth does not seem to measure it on its own but there is a program which can measure it for you.

1. Right click on your path and choose Copy.
   
   

   Copying your path details

2. Download the “Google Earth Path Measurer” here and install it.
3. Run the program and first check whether or not the right units are selected (I don’t use miles, so I needed to change it to kilometers):
   
   

   Choosing kilometres using the radio button

4. Click “Calculate distance from clipboard” to take the path you copied earlier and use it in the program:
   
   

   Clicking calculate distance from clipboard

5. The program will ask if you would like to update the KML file. If you say yes, it will update what you have copied so that it contains the distance as well. This is useful for putting back into Google Earth (see my article about how to do that here). Just click “Yes, update” and continue:
   
   

   Updates the path you have stored with its distance

6. The program will then display your path’s distance:
   
   

   The distance is shown next to your path's name

I’ve got information on how to put these measured paths back into Google Earth in this new post – http://www.patrickcatanzariti.com/2010/09/putting-a-measured-path-back-into-google-earth/

Hope that helps!