First I want to thank all of you for your response, the list has come through again! Thanks a ton! If anyone is interested I did use #8, but I had to save it as a .jpg not wmf file. I inserted it into Word and it looks great! Thanks again, Cn Note: I know it is important how you word things when sending out specific directions, so I just tried to copy the response messages so all would be included. Problem: Allowing another person in the company to view my maps. Finding something simple enough for them to use and not giving them the ability to change the data. I would like to be able to display a map, zoom in/out and pan. It must be simple to use. Questions? 1. How do you imbed a map into Word, or do you save it as a *mif file, and then how do you import it? 2. Is there a utility to save a workspace as a bitmap? 3. Is there a utility to save a workspace as a *.pdf (Acrobat file)? Some of the solutions are as follows: General Ideas: 1. Many responses said to try Proviewer from the Geospatial web site, I have tried it. I think it is a great product, however it just isn't right for my application, I would have to have 5000 people go out and register with MapInfo and download the view, and quite simply put - even if some people at my company could download it they wouldn't know how to use it. These people are NOT technical. 2. The same above applies for CartoMap which I got from a link off the Geospacial web site also. A wonderful product, just not for this specific project. 3. Try to "save the window as" a jpeg *.jpg, and view it with Netscape or Explorer? You can even create a larger image, defining a larger "image size" 4. Dragging and dropping the map window into your word document using the 'clone window' tool. 5. Use esri's arcexplorer, it's free. just convert your files to .shp for use in the viewer. 6. Our HGIS demo software is small and provides a MIF (Lat/Lon) file viewer. It is much smaller(~350kBytes) and simpler than ProViewer, but unfortunately, it allows the user to save 10 files and then locks out saving files. If you provide read-only MIF copies of your files to your users, then they cannot modify the files accidentally with our software. www.starpal.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- As for saving the workspace as a bitmap: 7.You ask if there is a utility to save a bitmap file. Under file, go to 'save window as' to save as a bitmap. But I recommend saving as a windows metafile, as the quality is much higher. There may be problems with thematic maps though, depending on what type you are using (my dots change size in 'ranged' thematic maps). To open this in word go to 'insert/picture' and select your metafile. From there, you can change the size of it if you need. 8. When I have to send maps to other users, I make the whole thing, layout and all, in MI, then with the Layout selected choose Save Window As... a temp WMF file. Then in Word, choose Insert>Picture from file. Choose your WMF file and it will take the whole layout page and stick it in the page. You may want to alter your Word page setup first to reflect the shape and size of the map you are importing. Then when you select the picture, you should get the Drawing toolbar to popup. Use the Crop tool to pull in the edges of the picture to the actual borders of the map and then use the Pick too to pull one of the corners out to fit the page. It seems like a lot of steps, but it should produce the desired result. The benefit of using WMF is that it is a vector format, so when you zoom in or stretch the image, it doesn't get all 'pixelated' like a bitmap would. The disadvantage is that if there are changes to make, you have to do them in MI and re-import the picture. 9. You can use File | Save Window As to save to the following formats: *.BMP, *.WMF, *.JPG, *.PNG, *.TIF and *.PSD You could then place the resulting images into a Word or PowerPoint document. ------------------------------------------------------------------- As for saving the workspace as *.pdf file format: 10. I believe it is possible to save your workspaces as PDF files using an Adobe PostScript Printer Driver "AdobePS" in which you can download from the Adobe web site. From there you can view these PDF images in Abobe Acrobat Reader which is also free to download. 11. A suggestion I have gotten so far is to save as an EPS (encapsulated postscript) file: " The simplest way to get one of these (EPS) is to install a printer that uses this format and print to file. Windows makes this easy. In your printers window select "Add Printer" From the Add wizard select "Local Printer." The wizard will build a database of available drivers. Select the "Apple LaserWriter II NTX" from the list of available printers. Select "File: ..." from the list of ports. After the printer is set up, go to its property pages and on the "PostScript" tab select "Encapsulated PostScript." " (that was quoted from one of the emails I got last week regarding a similar questio nto yours). After you've done this, make as if you were going to send your workspace to your printer (File/print), but check the 'print to file' box. Someone else told me to change the filetype of this file from 'prn' to 'eps'. Now that you have an EPS file, you can import it (theoretically)into another programs such as Adobe Illustrator, and save as a PDF file. I downloaded a free temporary copy of this program from the net, but wasn't able to open my EPS file, so I'm back at the drawing board. 12. When I have to send maps to other users, I make the whole thing, layout and all, in MI, then with the Layout selected choose Save Window As... a temp WMF file. Then in Word, choose Insert>Picture from file. Choose your WMF file and it will take the whole layout page and stick it in the page. You may want to alter your Word page setup first to reflect the shape and size of the map you are importing. Then when you select the picture, you should get the Drawing toolbar to popup. Use the Crop tool to pull in the edges of the picture to the actual borders of the map and then use the Pick too to pull one of the corners out to fit the page. It seems like a lot of steps, but it should produce the desired result. The benefit of using WMF is that it is a vector format, so when you zoom in or stretch the image, it doesn't get all 'pixelated' like a bitmap would. The disadvantage is that if there are changes to make, you have to do them in MI and re-import the picture. 13. Using our MAPublisher product in combination with either Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia FreeHand you can create pdf files from MapInfo data and even pdfPLUS files which are pdf's that contain searchable and queriable data from the GIS file. http://www.avenza.com 14. Try the "Search" function on the-L site, there are all sorts of gems in there. There's something called "Distiller" which creates PDF files, but I'm only aware of its existence, a "Search" should fill you in on some details. 15. Yes you can save a workspace to *.PDF. You have two options: Adobe Acrobat ( the full version, not just the Acrobat reader ) or Adobe Distiller. With Distiller, go to File | Print and choose the Adobe Distiller. This will automatically create a PDF for you and open it in Acrobat. With the full version of Acrobat, you just go to File | Print and choose the Adobe PDFwriter driver to create a *.PDF. This option is better in that you have control of the file options possible when you create the PDF (page orientation, compression methods, etc...). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
