Free For All – ArcGIS Tips and Shortcuts
If you spend a lot of time in ArcMap, you probably find yourself doing the same simple tasks over and over again. Whether it’s refreshing layers, zooming in, zooming out, paning or zooming to full extent, you do them more often than you think. Just think about how much time you waste moving your curser to the toolbar and clicking on the tiny icons. While you are probably aware that there are shortcuts in ArcGIS, you may be surprised by how many exist and what you can do with them. There are shortcuts for map navigation, the table of contents window, tables and editing. Below is a short list of some of the most useful shortcuts, you can find the full list along with time-savers and tips here.
A List of Useful ArcGIS Shortcuts
- Refresh–F5
- Pan–Hold down mouse wheel and drag
- Change to Zoom In tool–Hold down Z
- Change to Zoom Out tool–Hold down X
- Go to Full Extent–Insert
- Zoom to layer extent–Alt + click layer name in Table of Contents
- Turn on/off all layers–Ctrl + spacebar
- Rename selected item–F2
- Undo last edit–Ctrl + Z
Hopefully this knowledge saves you some time and reduces monotony in all your GIS projects!
