Yes indeed, it was more than 4 years ago Esri made possible the inclusion of Esri Maps for users of the industry-standard, Office suite of apps (think Word, Excel, PowerPoint), the solution was known as Esri Maps for Office. Fast-forward to 2016 and Esri users and subscribers to ArcGIS Online still can make maps and perform spatial analysis from inside the Microsoft Office ecosystem, now know as ArcGIS Maps for Office and at R 4.0
Now granted, everyone can access ArcGIS online, the powerful Story Maps capabilities, and the data-rich webmaps and in-the-cloud data that Esri makes available, however, the non-GIS or power user may prefer to stay within the Office environment to mashup data and even perform spatial analysis and create compelling maps and Infographics – enter ArcGIS Maps for Office.
Simply put, using this solution, users can create maps from XLS spreadsheets, and other common machine readable data so commonly found on the web – just look through any Government Open data Portal and you’ll quickly locate a wealth of tabular data served up in CSV or XLS files. Additionally, Esri Maps for Office brings mapping into PowerPoint by allowing you to include dynamic maps from Excel or maps from ArcGIS Online as slides within any PowerPoint presentation.
What Can you Do?
- put points on a map
- style, theme, and symbolize your data
- share a map in ArcGIS
- use your own geocoding service (limited only by your available AGO credits)
- map polygonal data and your own, custom boundary data
- access data for infographics
- gain insights into your data
Creating an ArcGIS map inside Excel
Maps for Office is just one more way that ArcGIS online and Esri [cloud] hosted data can be extended and leveraged by all. Microsoft Office “power users” within your organization can remain working inside an environment that is familiar. Download and installation of ArcGIS Maps for Office is quick and simple, provided your organization has the proper license from Esri. Once downloaded by your system administrator, Esri Maps for Office brings mapping into PowerPoint by allowing you to include dynamic maps from Excel or maps from ArcGIS Online as slides within any PowerPoint presentation. To proceed to make maps, simply sign in to your ArcGIS Online account, then within the Office App of choice (Excel or PowerPoint) select your data table, point to a location field (like address), set a map style and then start mapping!
ArcGIS Maps for Office is a great solution for any large organization that needs to provide access and analytic capabilities to everyone, even the non-GIS user or person who doesn’t want to be a GIS user!
For more information, Esri Canada recently hosted an interesting online webinar about ArcGIS Maps for Office. This webinar and more can be found archived online HERE.
See also:
- What’s New in ArcGIS Maps for Office 4.0
- Download ArcGIS Maps for Office
- Esri maps for Office videos
Note: ArcGIS Online is not only extendable to the Office ecosystem, we have a solution for WordPress users – Web Maps for WordPress – Web Maps is designed to bridge the gap between authoritative maps registered with ArcGIS Online and WordPress
