Australia · G-NAF validatedPro
Check Australian address data in CSV and Excel files
Upload a spreadsheet or CSV to clean and validate its Australian address data. DataMadeClean checks suburb, state and postcode combinations against G-NAF, Australia's national address dataset. Review flagged issues and recorded changes before downloading your cleaned file.
Free cleaning available · G-NAF validation requires Pro or Pro+ and available reference data
Common issues in Australian address data
Consistent spelling and formatting do not establish that an address combination exists. Australian geography checks need reference data for the suburb, state and postcode together.
- Suburb and postcode mismatches — e.g. "Fortitude Valley" entered with the postcode for a different suburb
- State abbreviated inconsistently — "QLD", "Qld", "Queensland", or missing entirely
- Street type inconsistencies — "St" vs "Street", "Rd" vs "Road"
- PO Box addresses mixed in with street addresses in the same column
- Suburb name misspellings that look plausible but don't exist — "Paddington" vs "Padington"
Before / after
The same addresses, validated
Before
| Address | Suburb | State | Postcode |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Adelaide st | Brisbane | qld | 4000 |
| unit 5/45 collins street | melbourne | Victoria | 3000 |
| 8 Smith Rd | Padington | NSW | 2021 |
After
| Address | Suburb | State | Postcode |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Adelaide Street | Brisbane | QLD | 4000 |
| Unit 5/45 Collins Street | Melbourne | VIC | 3000 |
| 8 Smith Road | Paddington ⚠ | NSW | 2021 |
Illustrative formatting and locality corrections when the configured reference data supports them. A corrected locality does not confirm that the person lives there or that mail can be delivered. Review unresolved matches before using the file.
How DataMadeClean handles it
Upload, validate, review
Upload your file
CSV or XLSX with address, suburb, state and postcode columns — column names are auto-detected.
G-NAF validation
Each address is checked against the official national address file — suburb/state/postcode combinations that don't exist are flagged, not silently guessed.
Standardisation
Street types, state abbreviations and capitalisation are normalised to Australia Post conventions.
Review & download
See exactly which rows were corrected, standardised or flagged for manual review, then download the cleaned file.
Limitations
What G-NAF validation won't catch
- G-NAF validates existing addresses; it won't catch a plausible-but-wrong unit or house number within a real street.
- Very new developments not yet in the G-NAF dataset may be flagged as unrecognised rather than auto-corrected.
- PO Box and other non-physical addresses are standardised but not validated against G-NAF, since they aren't part of that dataset.
Check your suburb, state and postcode combinations against Australian address data.
Try it with your file →Questions
How Australian address validation works
What does it actually check?
Whether the suburb, state and postcode on a row agree with each other, against G-NAF — the national address file the Australian government publishes. That is a different check from tidying the spelling: Sydney, QLD, 4000 is three individually valid values and not a real address. Address validation is a Pro feature.
What happens when the three do not agree?
The row is flagged for review and left exactly as it is. Sydney, QLD, 4000 comes back unchanged with a note that the locality could not be confirmed against that state and postcode. Rewriting it would mean guessing which of the three fields was wrong, and nothing in the file says.
Will it correct a misspelled suburb?
Only where the correction is unambiguous. Brisban, QLD, 4000 becomes Brisbane City, an official G-NAF locality for that postcode: the state and postcode narrow it to a handful of localities, and only one of those is a close enough match for what was typed. A correctly spelled Brisbane is left alone — a broader place name covering several official localities is treated as valid, not rewritten. Anything further from a real locality is flagged rather than matched to the nearest guess.
Does it work if the whole address is in one column?
Yes. 12 Queen St, Brisbane QLD 4000 is parsed and returned as 12 Queen Street, Brisbane, QLD 4000, and a mismatch inside the string is flagged the same way it would be across separate columns.
Will it change how my suburb names are capitalised?
It follows the column rather than imposing a style. A column written entirely in capitals stays in capitals; one written in title case stays in title case. Where a column is mostly one style, the odd value out is brought into line with the rest.
How long is my file kept?
Anonymous uploads and their results are deleted an hour after cleaning. Signed in, results follow your account's retention period, seven days by default, and you can shorten it or delete a result yourself at any time. Read the privacy policy.
Upload your address data and see what G-NAF validation catches.
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