Exercise 2: View your current sales figures

You've been keeping track of your U.S. sales by state for the last few months in a Microsoft Excel worksheet, but it is difficult to get a clear picture of how your business is doing by simply looking at a large set of numerical data.

In this exercise, you use MapPoint to import your sales data and display it as a Shaded Area Map to help you interpret your sales figures. You choose the Shaded Area Map from the many available map types because your data contains values (sales figures) that pertain to specific geographic areas (states).

1. Clear the current map by clicking New   on the Standard toolbar.

   Note  If you are prompted to save changes to your current map, you may do so, but it is not necessary for completing this exercise.

2. On the Data menu, click Import Data Wizard.

3. Open the Excel sample data file by browsing to C:\Program Files\Microsoft MapPoint 2009\Samples\, selecting SampData.xls, and clicking Open.

   Note  This is the default installation location. If you installed MapPoint in a different location, use Search or Find in Windows Explorer to locate the file.

4. On the Choose the sheet or range you want to map page, click Sales, and then click Next.

5. Look at the headings in the row labeled Data type to confirm that MapPoint has correctly determined the types of data contained in your columns.

   Why?

   MapPoint assigns a data type for each column of your data based on the name of the column heading. Sometimes you may need to make adjustments. For example, if you have a column heading for countries named CTY, but it's assigned a data type of City, you need to change the Data type assignment to Country.

6. Click Finish.

   MapPoint determines where your records will be placed on the map, based on the location information contained in your data.

7. On the Choose a map type page, click Shaded Area, and then click Next.

8. Because you want to see your company's sales information and not your competitors', in the Select the data field or column to map box, click Our Sales ($).

9. Because you want to show your sales information by state, in the Show the data by box, make sure that State is selected, and then click Next.

10. On the Format the Shaded Area Map legend page, click Finish.

    Note  MapPoint chooses certain options on this page based on the way your data is organized. You can use the Format the Shaded Area Map legend page to change the way your information is displayed on the map.

    MapPoint places your data on the map.

11. To remove roads from the map and make your data more visible, on the Advanced toolbar, in the map style list, click Data Map.

Result

You now have a Shaded Area Map with a continuous range of sales figures, which helps you determine at a glance that sales in the Eastern U.S. are much lower than in the rest of the country.

After you complete this exercise, your map should look like this:

  Move on to Exercise 3: Find out where your target customers are.

  Go back to the MapPoint Tutorial start page and try another exercise.