Map Monday Video • US National Country Map with Names in PowerPoint

It is time for our Map Monday Video so on to a question that came into our comment box, people send us all kinds of questions and we love to get them.

Today's question comes a viewers boss and the question is do you have an editable national US County PowerPoint map with all of the names listed on the map.

Answer:
So they're asking about our USA National County editable PowerPoint map. This is the map the entire national US County editable PowerPoint map. This map is in PowerPoint and it has all the counties in United States all 3120 of them and also has all of their names on it.

So lets bring that map up here in PowerPoint so you can see that. So this is a fully editable National US map of all the counties in PowerPoint, all 3120 of them in United States. So if I click on it let's say the state of Maine, lets zoom in here and I can select this state and go to my formatting palette and choose another color. We can change this orange color to say a yellow color. I still have the entire state grouped so it all changes to one color, but everything in this state is a separate editable County. The state of Maine is made up of individual county maps and I can go and ungroup it in PowerPoint and work each individual county. I go to the draw toolbar and I can just click right here and I can now see all the individual counties are separate objects. I can color each individual object and fill it with its own color.

So that's what people are asking about, that can they change these things, are they editable but what they are really looking for is are there names on all of these counties. Because this is a big map with a lot of names and a lot of counties and they wanted to go in there and find their specific County and make the changes. So yes we have a US national County map with all the usual counties and that we also have a version with names on it. The name version isn't on the site but we can send you that our version if you purchase of the regular County map. It is a pretty big file so we just email it to you rather than set up for download like all the others.

So not only can you change all the individual counties and the colors but also the text you just have to ungroup it is we have it group by state can keep it organized. Each one of those names can be change, formatted differently, deleted or moved around or whatever it is you want to do.


Here is the link for the actual map on MapsForDesign.com
http://www.mapsfordesign.com/US-National-County-Editable-County-PowerPoint-Map-for-Building-Regions.html

We have lots of customers go in and customize this map especially when they have a need for a general territory map that's crossing state lines. There are much more sophisticated maps out there that are tied to a database, we don't have that. Our map is all done by hand but it works pretty well when you need to set up a basic territory map.
We also have individual state county maps in PowerPoint.

The slide package also includes a version of the map with names, without names, on a blank map with just names, and also a state outline map that can be laid on top to give you a nice borders.

For More Information, These maps are located on both of our sites on
http://www.BJDesign.com our subscription site
http://www.Mapsfordesign.com our site for individual maps

How to Add Cities and Location Dots to Our Editable PowerPoint Maps

We had a great question from a customer on how to add new cities and location dots to our PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator maps. This is pretty easy to do using either a text bullet or drawing a small circle and then a text box for the name. I also thought this would make a great video as we get this question now and then.

We love customer questions, please let us know what you need to know and we make up a video on the question.

Plotting Locations on PowerPoint Maps

A question we get a lot is about can you plot store locations, third party sites, sales offices etc. on our maps.

The answer is yes it is very easy. Our PowerPoint maps are fully editable and they are easy to color, add text, move stuff around. They make a great solution for sending out info on your locations. PowerPoint files email very easily and can be opened by almost anyone in the business world.

You can put little stars or boxes, color them, make them any size, they are easy to move around. If you need to add text, just use the text tool, type what you want, format it and then put it where you need.

Take a look at our How Do I Add Text to a PowerPoint Map video for some additional info. I am going to see if I can grab a moment and do an additional video on this topic.

Overview Video for Our Editable PowerPoint, Royalty Free Clip Art Maps for Presentations

 
Royalty free, downloadable, editable clip art maps, perfect for setting up sales and marketing presentations, showing sales territories, office locations, defining regions and project progress. Maps are also great for illustrations, websites, education, school projects, home schooling and scrapbooking.

Includes a full range of World maps, USA maps, 50 US States plus territory maps, 50 State County maps, Canada maps and Provinces maps, World Regional maps with editable countries, over 90 individual countries including United States maps, Canada maps, United Kingdom maps, India map, Australia map, and many more.

Each immediately downloadable states, county, or country map, is an individual element that can be easily edited, modified, customized, resized, changed, colored however you like or deleted, group or setup a custom map. All text blocks are live text that can be edited and changed. Easy to make a blank or printable maps for schoolor other projects, just remove the color. All maps come loaded right in a PowerPoint slide for easy editing and work with all the PowerPoint tools. Our editable clip art maps work with all version of PowerPoint on PCs or Macintosh, and with Apple's Keynote presentation software

You can see all of our new How to Edit our PowerPoint maps videos on our editablemaps YouTube Channel

12 New How-to Videos for MapsforDesign Editable PowerPoint Maps

We have been quiet but quite busy lately here at the World of Maps. We have been redoing all of our How-To Videos for editing and customizing our editable PowerPoint Maps for MapsForDesign.com. Reworking each one to clean it up, update for PowerPoint 2007, and give everyone better instructions one how to do the different tasks. It has taken a while but we are done and they are now up on YouTube and will shortly be up on the MapsforDesign.com instruction page.

Some of the thing we did were simplified each video-"One Video/One Idea, aka Ed Dale," rewrote the YouTube and website text, new graphics, consistent look across all videos, beefed up the keyword research for better tags and helping customers find what they need, improved the titles and really worked enhancing the YouTube page. The goal was to have it all done for Labor day so that we can turn the videos over to our web master and he can connect them all to the site. Over the next couple weeks we will post each one here also.

You can visit the YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/editablemaps and see all the new videos

Let us know what you think and are some more videos we should be pulling together.

Technical Question on Making Hi Res JPG Maps from PowerPoint

PowerPoint has a lot of great uses that a lot of people just don't know about. One of them is outputing jpg files that can be used for print or on your website, kind of a poor mans version of Adobe Illustrator.

We had this great question from Carlie on how to make a hi res jpg file from PowerPoint

Question:
When saving as a jpeg, is there a way to edit the resolution? It automatically saves to 96dpi. I'd like to save as 300dpi

Answer: 
Hi, Carlie, thank you for your question. I am assuming you are working out of PowerPoint. Making a jpg file is an easy save as option in the Save As pull down menu under the File menu. Instead of saving the PowerPoint file as a slide deck, just choose jpg.. If you are going to the web then as it saves it is fine, the resolution is 96 dpi, if you are going to print then you might want it higher.

Here is a way to do that. Set up a larger PowerPoint slide, maybe 20" x 20", in document setup, copy the map into it, (this is important, otherwise it gets distorted, don't enlarge the slide with the map in place, copy it onto the new slide), group it, enlarge it and then make the jpg. Then in Photoshop or some other photo editing program you can reduce it down to a smaller size and the resolution will go up proportionally.  You can also just resize the jpg in your layout program and the resolution goes up.

So 9 inches at 100dpi, becomes 300dpi at 2.25, a very easy way to make a hi res jpg file.

We also have a video on this

Helpful How To Customize Clip Art Maps Video Tips

Thank you for the comment,

"Thanks, World of Maps for the video tips. I am in the process of adding names of cities to our maps and this is very helpful. I am pleased with the map program. Our salesmen have also appreciated the crispness of the finished product as opposed to the hand colored maps that were done in the past."

We now have all of our How To Edit and Customize video tips up online. You can check them out in our FAQ section http://www.bjdesign.com/html/questions.html

How to Split a State or Country in Half

Customer Question: Can I cut two States in half to show sales and marketing territories, is that possible with your editable PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator royalty free clip art?

Answer: Yes you can split a state in half. If you are using our Adobe Illustrator clip art it is pretty straight forward. You use the scissor tool and cut the lines, you then use the line tool and rejoin the parts and fill them.

If you are using PowerPoint it isn’t possible to cut the state border lines, but we have figured out two work arounds for this. We have set up a web site with How to Videos where this is explained, also if you sign up for our Tips lessons you can download the How to Book.

If you go to this site : http://mapsfordesignhowto.blogspot.com/

To put it simply you can split the state but you can make it look like you did by overlaying a piece of the state on top of the existing state and coloring it. With simple outline states like Colorado you can just trace the border with the drawing tool. With more complex state outlines like California you copy the state and then nibble away the points with the edit points tool. Add a new color, lay it on top and to the viewer it looks like the state has been split in half.

How To Video for Applying CS3 InDesign Transparency

How to Video on using CS3 Indesign’s Opacity Effect Feature, or what used to be called Transparency. This feature allows the background graphic to show through a solid colored box that lays on top of it. This is a great way to keep the continuity of the cover and tie all of the elements together. It is also a great way to highlight the type without it getting lost in a complex graphic like one of our maps.

For the graphic we used one of our Royalty Free World Vintage Maps from our Antique Historical Clip Art Maps Collection. On top of that was a colored box with some type on top of that. By setting the opacity of the box to 70% we can see a shadow of the map below.

The effects feature is located in the Window pull down Menu. We left the main pop-up setting at Normal. Opacity is just to the right. Select the solid box first and then apply the screening by sliding the slide bar to the left or typing in a number. Experiment until you like the effect. Works with type also if you select it with the pointer tool.

To learn more on the collection visit: http://www.antiquehistoricalmaps.com.