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MapInfo Monday: Editing Text in the Layout Window

  • 1.  MapInfo Monday: Editing Text in the Layout Window

    Employee
    Posted 17 days ago
    Edited by Peter Møller 17 days ago

    In MapInfo Pro, the layout is where you put together your final output with maps, legends, and many other elements. Texts are often one of these "other elements".

    In the layout window, texts are in frames just like any other object type. Texts can be a fixed text that you type in and it will keep the current value. Texts can also be Smart Texts and hold an expression that may change over time or as elements on the layout change. And finally, you can combine the two.

    Sometimes your layout can be quite big and when you zoom out to see the entire layout, the texts are quite small. This makes it hard to change the text at this zoom as you type the text on the layout using the text size specified.

    Here you can see that I have selected a text frame.

    When I double-click on a text frame I go into edit mode and can change the text in the text frame. When you are zoomed out, it can be hard to see the cursor and the text itself. This makes it quite hard to change the text. Can you spot the cursor in the image below?
    With the release of MapInfo Pro v2023.1, we also released a new version of the WindowHelper tool in the MapInfo Marketplace. One of the new tools in WindowHelper can help you edit texts in the layout window. This does require that you download and install the WindowHelper tool from the MapInfo Marketplace.
    With a selected text frame you can now access the Layout Text Editor dialog.
    You can access this from the Layout tab via the Edit Text control.
    Or via the Edit Text control in the Layout context menu.
    This will open the Layout Text Editor dialog allowing you to better see and edit the text from the selected text frame.
    You can add a fixed text to a Smart Text as you can see below.
    When you click the OK button, the text frame in the layout window will be updated with the text you entered in the Layout Text Editor dialog.
    This feature was raised as an idea on Precisely Ideas.
    Hopefully, you will find this valuable. Happy #MapInfoMonday!



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    Peter Horsbøll Møller
    Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
    Precisely | Trust in Data
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