PowerPoint map tutorials

This tutorial builds two maps of France: one of the whole country and one divided into regions.

Steps

1. Open the Geo tab in the PowerPoint ribbon and click Single country. A list of countries appears.
2. Scroll down to France, or type the first letter of the country name to jump to that part of the list. Select the entry called simply France. It is the whole country, with no regional breakdown.
3. Untick Display region names if you want a clean map without labels.
4. Click Select. GeoAddIn draws France on the current slide.
5. Go to your second slide and click Single country again. Scroll down the list. A country is listed once for each level of detail available, so France has an entry for the country and another for its regions. Select France regions.
6. This time Display region names is already ticked, so every region will carry its name. Untick it if you prefer no labels.
7. Click Select. France appears on the slide divided into its regions.

What you end up with

You end up with two slides. The first holds France as a single outline. The second holds France split into regions, each region an individual PowerPoint shape with its name inside. Because they are ordinary shapes, you can click a region and change its colour, delete it or move it. The same steps work for any country in the list. Only the name you pick changes.

This tutorial builds a map of the Benelux, meaning Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and then marks each capital.

Steps

1. On the Geo tab, click Multiple countries and cities. A task pane opens on the right side of PowerPoint.
2. Open the Select country drop-down, choose Belgium and click Add selected. Do the same for the Netherlands and for Luxembourg. The three countries now sit in your list.
3. Click Insert to slide. After a few seconds the three countries appear on the slide as one map.
4. Go to the next slide to add cities. Click Luxembourg in the list of selected countries, type LU in the city box, choose Luxembourg from the suggestions and click Add selected.
5. Click Netherlands in the list, type AM and pick Amsterdam. Click Belgium, type BR and pick Brussels. Add each one with Add selected.
6. Click Insert to slide again. GeoAddIn draws the same countries, this time with the three cities added.

What you end up with

The second slide holds the same three countries with a marker on each capital. The selection stays in the task pane between insertions, so you can keep adding places and insert again. Each country is a separate PowerPoint shape, so afterwards you can recolour Belgium, delete Luxembourg or move a marker without GeoAddIn.

Read the full written tutorial for this video →

This tutorial builds a map of France with the airports close to its borders. It shows how to add airports, and how to remove a country from the map while keeping its airports.

Steps

1. On the Geo tab, click Multiple countries and cities in the Create map section.
2. In the task pane, open the Select country drop-down, choose France and click Add selected.
3. Click the box under Select cities from France and type the airport code BSL. From the filtered results choose EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg. Airports are treated as cities, so you can find them by their IATA or ICAO code. Click Add selected.
4. Repeat for the neighbours: add Italy and the airport TRN (Turin), Luxembourg and LUX, Spain and GRO (Girona), and Switzerland and GVA (Geneva). Each time, pick the country first, then the airport, then click Add selected.
5. Click Insert to slide. GeoAddIn draws all five countries with their airports.
6. Go to your second slide. In the list of selected countries, click Remove for Switzerland, Spain, Luxembourg and Italy. This removes only the countries. Their cities and airports stay in the selection.
7. Click Insert to slide again.

What you end up with

The first slide shows five countries with five airports. The second shows France alone, with all five airports still marked, including the four that sit in neighbouring countries. It is a way to show catchment areas or cross-border traffic without drawing the neighbours. As with every GeoAddIn map, the result is made of ordinary PowerPoint shapes that you can restyle.

This tutorial saves a map to disk, reloads it in a new presentation, combines it with a second saved map and then resizes the result.

Steps

1. Start from a map that has eight countries and their capitals in the task pane. Click Save map at the bottom of the task pane. In the file dialog, type a descriptive file name and click Save.
2. To load it again, start a new presentation and choose the blank slide layout. Open the Geo tab and click Multiple countries and cities.
3. In the task pane, click Open map, select the file you saved and click Open. The countries and cities appear in the task pane exactly as you saved them.
4. Click Insert to slide to generate the map.
5. To combine maps, add a new slide and click Open map again. Select a second file, here one with Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and their capitals, and click Open. Its countries and cities are added to those already in the task pane. Check the two lists, then click Insert to slide.
6. To resize the map, right-click it and choose Size and Position. In the Format Shape pane, tick Lock aspect ratio, then set Scale Height to 120%. The width follows automatically. Drag the map to where you want it.

What you end up with

You end up with a saved map file you can reuse in any presentation, a slide with the map rebuilt from that file, a slide with two saved maps combined, and a map sized to fit. Saving is worth doing for any map that took more than a couple of minutes to assemble. The same file can be reopened next month, or added to a different map.