Setting bookmarks

Since we are setting this up as a locator map for our US Counties map, we will focus on North America. To zoom into our desired area, hold the Shift key and move the mouse over the Map View. Notice that your cursor changes to a magnifying glass. Click and drag a box around North America to zoom in. 

The Map tab on the ribbon contains several other tools for zooming and panning around the map. In the Navigate section, you'll find the Explore button, which has several drop-down options, but which, when active, allows you to pan around the map with the hand icon. There are a number of options for zooming in and out on your map:

• Full Extent: This icon zooms to the full extent of all data layers in the map.
• Previous Extent: This icon zooms back to your previous extent.
• Next Extent: This icon should remain grayed out until after you've used the Previous Extent tool. Once it's active, you can hop back and forth between zoom levels.

You can also zoom in and out on your map incrementally by using the Fixed Zoom In and Fixed Zoom Out buttons. The Shift-Zoom feature works well when you have a specific extent to which you want to zoom, as in this case.

Your map should now look something like this:

This is a common level at which we want to view our data, and also the extent we'll display as our locator map when we move to the Layout View. To make sure we can easily come back to this same extent, we'll set a Bookmark. 

If you've been experimenting with the zoom and pan tools, return to the extent shown in preceding figure: 

1. Click the Bookmark icon and select New Bookmark.
2. Name your bookmark North America and click OK.
3. Now, when you click Bookmarks, you will see your new bookmark with a thumbnail for handy reference.
4. Test it out! Click the Full Extent button and zoom out to the whole world again.
5. Then, click Bookmarks and select your bookmark.

Bookmarks are a great way to keep track of areas for your final map layout, but also for checking details or creating multiple layout options from a single map. You can create as many bookmarks as you like for each map.