Organizing a map
The Edit > Organize menu option is an advanced grouping tool. It allows you to group all items in a map that have the same relation to the selected item. Here is a quick example using the Google Inc. relationship map.

When we first load the Google Inc. map it looks like the one to the right with no grouped relations. There are over 50 relations in the map, so at first it appears a little bit crowded.

To organize the Google Inc. relations in the map we first have to select the item called Google Inc. Choose Edit > Organize and the resulting map will look like the one below.

Using the Expand command to explore relations
The Edit >Expand command can be a useful tool for expanding many connections at one time. Clicking on a single item expands the relations of that item. If you want to expand the relations of a large number items at one time you can select those items and choose Edit > Expand from the menu to have them all expand at once.

A couple of things to note

• There is a limit of thirty items for the Expand command. Currently the maps allow you to expand up to thirty items at one time. You will get a warning from the map applet if you try to expand more than the limit.
• It is useful to use the larger versions of maps when performing large expansions. Large expansions usually add many more items to a map, so having more room for the items is going to be helpful.

One of the best reasons to expand a large number of connections in a map is to allow you to explore the interconnections of items in a map that may not be obvious at first. Let’s look at an example using the large map of the American Clean Skies Foundation.

First we want to select all of the items in the map, so we drag our mouse around everything in the map to select them all. Next we choose the menu option Edit > Expand to expand all of the relations to these items.

The resulting map looks like this:

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