Esri Mapping Center - Ask a Cartographer

Creating High Quality Map Tables in ArcMap

May 02 2011 | 2 comments
Categories: Map Elements, Page Layout

I want to know if there is away in ArcMap to create high quality map tables. I have been using excel to create high quality tables and then pasting them into ArcMap. One issue I have with this is that if my table colors are complex they disappear when I export the map to a PDF. There are a lot of maps out there with high quality tables and I would like to be able to do all my table work in ArcMap if it has the same functionality as excel.

Mapping Center Answer:

There are two ways to work with the type of data you are describing in ArcMap -- using Tables and using Reports. Here is a blog entry we wrote about using Tables in ArcMap: Using tables in an ArcMap layout. You might find that all the functionality you want is not available with tables, in which case you should check out using reports in ArcMap. Here is the link to the online help on this subject: What are reports in ArcGIS?

Insert table as an object posted by Bhavna Kalla on May 3 2011 8:31AM

Try this: Insert > Object > Create from file> Browse > Select the file > Make sure teh Link option is checked > OK. This works just great. You can color live, change values, formatting etc... Everything shows up live.

Great tip! posted by Aileen Buckley on Jan 23 2012 6:10PM

This is a great tip, and it works really well, as Bhavna noted!

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