MAPPING AND DIGITIZATION IN MAP INFO

Once you have specified the control points, projection and map units of your map and have determined

that the error for control points is acceptable, you are ready to digitize your map.

To begin digitizing:

1.  Make the Map window active and make a layer editable.

2.  Choose any tool.

3.  Choose Map > Change View to set the zoom of the Map window to be larger than the area of the

map you are digitizing. This will keep the cursor in view during digitizing.

4.  In the Change View dialog, specify the X and Y coordinates of a point that generally falls in the

center of the map to be digitized.

5.  Click OK. The Map window now shows roughly the same area as your paper map. If you have

entered at least three control points in the Digitizer Setup dialog, digitizer mode should be on, and

the digitizer cursor should appear in the Map window.

6.  Press the D key to turn on digitizing mode. The cross hair cursor now becomes a cross hair.

7.  Begin tracing the map

To create a .tab file from your Excel (.XLS or .XLSX) data:

1.  In MapInfo Professional on the File menu, click Open to display the Open dialog box.

2.  In the Files of Type list select (.XLS or .XLSX), navigate to your data, and click Open.

3.  Select the worksheet you want in your MapInfo data table. Make sure that this data includes

either postal codes or longitude/latitude coordinate values. The default data range for an Excel

file is the entire worksheet.

a.  If you select the Use Row Above Selected Range for Column Titles check box, the

default data range begins at A2 (row 2).

 

b.  If you clear the Use Row Above Selected Range for Column Titles check box, both the

Named Range and Current Value fields revert to their previous values on the Entire

Worksheet.

4.  Click OK to display the Set Field Properties dialog box. This dialog box allows you to reset the

name, type and properties of any field (column) that you import from the Excel table. The top of 

the Set Field Properties window shows the Fields (column names) and Type (character, date, etc.)

from the Excel spreadsheet. When you select one of these fields, the Field Information box

entries at the bottom allow you to specify the field name, data type, number of characters (for

character and decimal fields) or number of decimals (for decimal fields only).

5.  Click OK to convert the data to a MapInfo table (.tab) format. Now that you have converted your

data, you can plot your data; see the next section to continue.

Displaying your Access (.MDB or .ACCDB) Data

To convert your Microsoft Access (.MDB or .ACCDB) data into a MapInfo Professional table:

1.  Choose File > Open. The Open dialog box displays.

2.  Choose Microsoft Access Database from the Files of type menu. The Access databases (.MDB

or .ACCDB) for the specified location display.

3.  Choose an Access database to open. If security is turned on, you will be prompted to give user

and password information to open the database.

4.  The Open Access Table dialog box displays the tables for the opened database.

5.  Choose an Access table or tables to open. The table or tables are opened in MapInfo Professional.

(Please note that for a table name with a space such as Order Details can be aved in MapInfo

Professional but subsequently will not be visible to MapInfo Professional.)