Mapping your Data - GIS In Excel!!!!

For all of you out there that have GIS departments and have subscriptions to ESRI I want to share an exciting tool that comes free with your subscription.

Esri Maps for Office

This exciting plug-in allows you to create interactive maps of your data right in excel.

Lets take a quick look

Once installed you will find a new ribbon tab in Excel "Esri Map

Clicking Insert Map insterts a dynamic map of the world

Now lets Add Excel Data.

There are several options for Location Type Choose the one that fits your data needs.

I am using Sample data that contains world wide shipping orders. So I am going to use World City
The next pop-up will ask you to define the city and country in your table

Ill choose ShipCity for the City and ShipCounrty for the Country

Now pins are put on the map for every entry in the table.

There are options to Group the Data

You can zoom in on the map and it will regroup as you move around

Clicking on one of the items in the map pulls up a window you can thumb through each entry

You can utilize and of ESRI's base maps from Aerials, Oceans, or Street Maps.

There are several other options including layer styles, heat spots, you can even enrich a layer with public data such as census data.

For more information check out ESRI for Office

http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/apps/esri-maps-for-office