Pitney Bowes MapInfo Professional - Manual (Page 311)

Saving labels is easy. Because labels are attributes of the map object, you do not have to remember to
save them to a separate table. Any label edits you have pending, or changes you have made to the
Layer Properties settings, are easily saved to a workspace. Because labels are saved in a workspace,
you can always create and edit whatever custom label settings you want, and you can always save those
labels-even if the tables you are using are read-only.
You can label your map automatically through Layer Control's Layer Properties dialog box. You customize
how labels display from the Layer Control window (make the Map window active and then select Map >
Layer Control) or directly on the map:
• To see labels displayed for your entire map layer, click the Automatic Labels icon in Layer Control
window.
• To make a change that applies to all the automatic labels in your layer, double-click the layer name
in the Layer Control window and make your changes in the Layer Properties dialog box. All automatic
labels are updated to use the settings that you choose: for example, if you change the label font so
that it is Italic, all automatic labels for that layer refresh to use Italic.
• To customize a single label, double-click that label on the map. For example, you might want most of
your labels to draw in 9-point Arial, but you might want one particular label to display in 18-point text
to show the importance of that geographic feature. Double-click the label that you want to customize
on the map, and in the Label Style dialog box customize the label.
• When you edit a label, the label becomes less dynamic. For example, if you double-click a label to
change its font, then that label has its own font setting. If you then assign a different label font to your
layer, the new label font will not apply to the label that you edited, because the edited label remembers
that it has a custom font. You can reset all edited labels by choosing Map > Clear Custom Labels.
• As an alternative to turning on automatic labels, you can label geographic features by hand one at a
time by selecting the Label tool from the toolbar and then clicking the geographic feature that you
want to label.
The Label tool only draws labels if the layer that you are clicking on is marked Selectable in
Layer Control window. Note:
To control whether you can select labels when you click on the map, click Selectable Labels in the
Layer Control window. By default, labels are selectable. You might make labels unselectable if you find
that you are accidentally selecting labels on the map when you were trying to select points or lines. This
is a per map setting, so each Map window has its own setting. Each map's Selectable Labels setting is
preserved when you save a workspace.
Choosing the Label Content
When you label your map automatically, or interactively using the Label tool, the content of the labels is
determined by the data associated with the geographic object. You can obtain the labels from the columns
in your table, or the derived result of an expression using the column information. If the column information
or an expression does not suit your needs, you can edit the label content or type in new text. See
Editing
Labels for more information.
Text you create yourself using the Text tool is a text object and behaves like other objects you draw on
your map such as squares and circles. Although labels and text objects behave somewhat differently,
text objects are still useful for additional map annotation such as titles. For information on text objects,
see
Working with Text on the Map .
The Autolabeler tool, available from the Tool Manager (on the Tools menu, click Tool Manager), creates
labels as text objects in the Cosmetic Layer. This application may be useful if you need to create labels
that can be transferred to a permanent table. In addition, you can create text objects and convert labels
into text objects using another tool from the Tool Manager set, the Labeler tool, which is explained later
in this chapter.
Labeling with a Column
311 MapInfo Professional User Guide
Chapter 12: Stylizing Your Map for Presentations and Publishing