JICREG mapping maps in PowerPoint are fully editable and customisable, to allow you the maximum flexibility in preparing slides and presentations exactly as you want them. However, as the maps are much more complicated objects than you may be used to dealing with in PowerPoint, and contain a deep hierarchy of grouped objects, there are some steps that you can take to make working with maps easier. You need only perform these steps on your machine once and PowerPoint will remember your settings for next time.

The tool that we are going to make extensive use of is the Select Multiple Objects tool. This tool presents a dialog where we can choose one or more things from the map, by their name, rather than having to click very precisely on the map. When we are able to accurately choose several objects at once, we can apply transforms or operations to all of those objects at once making the process of editing the map MUCH quicker.

The default setting in PowerPoint 2003 doesn't make the Select Multiple Objects tool very easy to access, so we are going to customise our toolbars, to make it easily available.

The first step is to start PowerPoint 2003. You don't even need to have a presentation loaded for the steps that follow.

Your screen probably looks something like this: 

figure 1 : The default PowerPoint 2003 window

Don't worry if it doesn't look identical, your company may already have done some customisation for you. The important part is to make sure that your drawing toolbar is visible. The default location for this toolbar is along the bottom of the PowerPoint application. Of course it is possible to move the drawing toolbar, so if you can't see it we will first check that it is displayed.

Make sure that there is a tick next to the drawing item under the View → toolbars → Drawing item as shown in the image below 

figure 2 : Checking that the Drawing Toolbar is visible

If there is then you should be able to see the Draw menu somewhere on your screen (normally at the bottom). It looks like this:

figure 3 : The Drawing Toolbar

We are going to customise this toolbar to add an extra button: Select Multiple Objects, to the end.

From the toolbars menu ( View → toolbars (see figure 2, above)) choose Customize…

figure 4 : The Customize Toolbar Dialog

This opens the Customize Toolbar Dialog, which we can use to make some of the tools that we use in manipulating maps more readily accessible.  With the Commands tab active, choose Drawing from the Categories pane on the left.  Now look in the Commands available on the right for the Select Multiple Objects item.  Select this with your mouse and drag it onto the Drawing toolbar.

figure 5 : The Drawing Toolbar after Select Multiple Objects tool has been added


Have a look at the other tools that are available in the customize toolbar dialog and add any others that you think are useful or might be helpful.  You can then close the dialog.  PowerPoint will remember your changes and so the next time you open PowerPoint the select multiple objects tool will still be easy for you to access.

The steps above are summarized in the following video

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