Selecting items on the maps and using the map tool menu
Most of the advanced mapping features involve selecting items on a map and using the menus to manipulate those selected items. Map tools enable you to delete items from a map, group items on a map, save a map for future reference or embed a map on your blog or website.

Here is a look at the menu bar that appears at the top of the map, showing the contents of the Edit menu:

There are five different menu items, File, Edit, View, Tools, and Help.

Edit Menu
The edit menu has seven options.
Edit > Find
When you first load a map and look at the edit menu you will see that only the Edit > Find… option is available – all of the other options are grayed out and unavailable. We’ll explain why in a minute, but first let’s look at what Edit > Find… does. If you select this, you’ll see a dialog box like the one to the right. This tool is useful for maps that have many relations since it is sometimes difficult to see the item you are looking for in complicated maps.

Enter the name of the item you are searching for in the box and click OK. If the item is found in the map it will present a dialog box that tells you you item was found and selected.

If the item is not found in the map a box will pop up to tell you that no matching items we found.

If there are multiple items that match your search terms you will get an alert like the one to the right which tells you that two items were found and selected. Notice how the two items we were trying to find in the map have been highlighted. The highlighting, or selecting of items on a map are one of the basic building blocks for more advanced mapping features. You will notice that menus have more options available to you once items have been selected on a map. Some of the menu options are available when one item has been selected, and some menu items are available when multiple items have been selected.

Selecting items in a map
Selecting items in a map is the key to unlocking the advanced features of the Muckety map menus. As we saw from the previous example, one way of selecting items on a map is to use the Edit > Find… menu to find and select items in a map. Another, perhaps more powerful way to select items in a map is to click on the map and drag your mouse around a single item or multiple items on the map. If you want to select multiple items in a map you can just loop you mouse around them to select them. If you want to select multiple items in a map that are not adjacent to one another you can select one item and then while holding down the shift key use your mouse to select other items in different areas of the map.

Deleting selected items from a map
Sometimes it is useful to delete items from a map to highlight the ones that are if interest for a particular story or research project. To delete an item or items from a map simply select the items you want to remove and choose the menu option Edit > Delete. The items you selected will be removed from the map and the map will redraw itself with the remaining items. Sometimes it is useful to repeat this process until you get to the core items that you wish to display or explore in your map.

Grouping selected items in a map
If you have a complicated map with many items in it you may want to group the items that are important for your purposes and then delete the remaining items from the map. Once you have deleted the unwanted items you can ungroup the items you want to further explore your map.

To group items in a map you must select at least two items for the option to appear in the Edit menu. Once you have selected the items you wish to group choose Edit > Group from the menu and you will be presented with a dialog box asking you to create a name for you group. The dialog box should look like the one above. Once you click OK, the multiple items you had selected will appear as one item with the name you chose for the group. Notice that grouped items appear in a different color than either people or non-people items.

Ungrouping grouped items
In the previous section we created a group and named it. There are two ways to to view the contents of a group. The first is to simply double-click on the grouped items and the group will become ungrouped. An alternative method is to select the grouped item and choose the menu option Edit > Ungroup.

It is important to note that all maps have an auto-grouping feature that will automatically group like items when a certain number of them appear in a map. Currently our maps are set to automatically group items when more than 10 items with the same relationship appear in a map.

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