The object of this lesson is to divide a state, county or country map in half and assign it different colors to show two territories. This will be a two-part lesson.
PowerPoint isn’t really a drawing program but we have found a couple of ways of doing this.
Option 1
1. Our first option is to use the EDIT POINTS Tool. The first step is to duplicate the object. Copy the state or county and paste it right on top or on the side of the existing state so that you can work on it.
2. Select the state with your mouse pointer; watch for the eight little handles to tell you it is selected.
3. Go to the DRAW Pop-Up menu in the Drawing Tool Bar and select EDIT POINTS, you will now see all of the drawing points or handles that make up that map.
4. While you hold down the Control key on the PC or the Option key on the Mac, you click on each point with the mouse pointer and start deleting the little points.
5. The object is to nibbling away the area you want to delete while your work your way around the edge. You end up at some point with a part of the state. Don’t worry it goes faster than you think.
6. Give it its own color and stroke or line and place it on top of the original map. And presto you have a state that looks to the viewer like you have cut it in half. But in reality it is made up of two pieces, a full state and half state lying on top.
TIP: Use the Zoom pop-up box in the Standard Toolbar to get in closer. 200% or 300% works well.
This guide works with PowerPoint version 2003 and older. All of the principals will work with version 2007 but the locations of the tools will differ. Most of the tools have been moved up to the top of the screen into the Ribbon.
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