How to Make a Custom PDF Map Worksheet for Your Students from PowerPoint
Hi and welcome to the world of maps. In this video, I’m going to show you how to make a pdf worksheet that you can use for an educational lesson plan, or a teacher resource sheet for your students. Whatever you need to do, you can take any of our maps and turn them into blank map outlines with instructions.
Our maps are completely editable, all the objects, whether they’re text or the land, states, counties, countries, can be customized. You can change the fill, add text, and add graphic elements.
For this lesson we will use a USA 50 State map with no text.
Select the Map
- The first thing you need to do is turn the map into a blank outline map.
- First, select the map. Using your cursor, click on a blank part of the slide and drag the mouse pointer around the map. You notice everything gets selected.
- I can also go to the Edit pull-down menu and click on Select All.
Fill the Selected Map with White
- Now that the map is selected we will fill it with the color white. Filling a map with a color makes it easier to select individual elements. Your colors are located in the Shape Fill in the Ribbon at the top of the slide.
Group Your States or Counties
- A key to working with maps is to Group everything together. It is much easier to move elements around if they are one unit.
- On a PC, Right Click your pointer on the selected map. If you are on a Mac, hold down the Control Key on the keyboard and Click on the selected map. Choose Group from the popup menu.
Now it’s one object and you can resized it for your worksheet.
Making the Worksheet Document
- Make a new PowerPoint presentation. Change the page orientation to vertical.
- To change the slide orientation from horizontal to vertical. Go to Page, File > Page Setup. The Page Setup Popup box probably says Widescreen. Change it to Letter Paper (8.5×11). You will notice that the measurements say 10 in x 7.5 in. These measurements are actually the live area of your new slide. We need to change the measurements to 8.5in x 11in.
- Click Yes on the Scale Up window. Remove the template elements that are on your slide. We will be adding our own.
- Now you are ready to make your worksheet. Let’s go back and get our USA map.
Making the Worksheet
Go back to the previous PowerPoint presentation with the USA map
- Select the USA black and white state map. Resize it or do any other customizing that you want to.
- Copy the map
- Paste it in the new worksheet PowerPoint slide.
- Resize and adjust your map on the slide.
- Add text, such as a header with name and date, questions or tasks to your worksheet.
- Save the document and give it a good name. This will be your master document.
- To distribute this worksheet to others you can save it as a PDF file. This makes it easy to print out or email. The PDF save option will be located in either the Print Menu or in an Export Menu. Both are located in the File Pull Down Menu.
To Review
So to review, we took an editable PowerPoint Map, we filled the States with white. We resized the map. We then opened a new document, made it vertical or horizontal, whichever way you want to go. Made it the correct size. Usually 8.5in x 11in or if you are in Europe or Australia A4, so it’s a standard paper size. We then customized it in PowerPoint, added tasks, saved it and then saved it as a pdf file.
