Transitioning to the Layout View

When you create a map for printing or digital publication, you work in the Layout View. Now that we've got our individual maps symbolized and ready to go, it's time to assemble a layout:

1. Click Insert|New Layout to add a layout to your project. Select letter-size paper from the ANSI Landscape category as your size and orientation. You now have a virtual page, a page that allows you to organize all the map elements before printing.
2. To add a map to your layout, click the Map Frame button on the ribbon. From the drop-down menu, select the Default map under US Counties. This will give you a full-page frame of your Counties map.
3. Click the Map Frame button again to add the North America map. This time, select the North America Bookmark you made to add a quarter-page frame (since we'll be reducing this anyway, it's easier to start with a smaller frame than to completely overlap the previous frame). If you picked the wrong one, just delete it and try again. Your maps are still dynamically connected to their original map frames. You can make changes to the maps in either the Map tab or the Layout tab, and both will be updated. In the Contents pane, you'll see each Map Frame listed in the collapsed form. As in Map View, you can expand and collapse these by clicking on the small triangle to the left of each item. You can also lock a Map Frame to prevent accidental changes while working on other parts of the layout: