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10 Second Tutorial: Embedding With Word

In the first column of what in will be a regular feature, Jonathan takes a look at a simple and effective, yet underused Office feature, embedding.

The 10 Second Tutorial will be a continuing column of MP2K, and will cover simple, non-programming techniques for helping you get the most out of MapPoint.

How do you send a MapPoint map to a colleague? Typically I'll use a utility such as HyperSnap from Hyperionics to capture the specific "region" on the screen I'm interested in and fire it off as a jpg attachment. The advantage is the person only needs the capability to view a jpg (built in to most e-mail clients) and they can see the map. Of course, if you know the person has MapPoint, you could send them a .ptm file which has the added flexibility of allowing them to pan around and zoom in/out on the map immediately and easily.

With only a minimum of additional effort, however, you can embed the map in a Word file which gives you the maximum in flexibility in presenting your map.

Consider this Word file: Jordan.doc (It's pretty basic, but without going into much embellishment, you can imagine your comany's letterhead, graphs--anything you can do with Word, wrapped up with your embedded map.)

What is significant about it being embedded? Double-click on the map, and the MapPoint application will open up and give you full control over the map as if you were running MapPoint alone.

To do it, go into Word and hit the MapPoint button on the toolbar. Note that if you already have MapPoint open and try to get the current map into Word using cut and paste, all you will get is a static image, not a MapPoint document embedded in Word. To embed your map, save it to a .ptm file first, hit copy in Explorer, and then paste it in Word.

Finally, go to File | Send To | Mail Recipient (As Attachment) and you're done.

Before I let you go, two quick items.

First, you can use standard office image manipulation tools to modify the appearance of the map while it is not active. For instance, in this document showing some airports in the Midwest, the four embedded maps are displayed with sharpened contrast, reduced brightness, and a border. The image manipulation toolbars are pretty standard across the Office family of products, as in emdedding documents in general.

And finally, as a reward for those who read this far, there is a contest for the best example of MapPoint embedded in Word. Take five or ten minutes, play with the embedding feature, and submit your entry to website@mp2kmag.com. The best submission will win a free FULL version of MapPoint 2002 worth $249! You are welcome to include links to your business or favorite charity, and all submissions will be on display below as they are submitted. The contest will end September 15th at midnight. Everyone is welcome to submit up to three entries up until the deadline, and entries will be judged based on quality of appearance, sophistication (VBA is allowed), and effectiveness in getting your point across. Good luck!

You can order a 60-day trial version of MapPoint 2002 from Microsoft here, or buy it at Amazon.

	MP2Kmag Internet