Hello,

I've been provided a set of Mappoint territories in PTM format that I need to convert to a shapefile format (any shapefile format will work). I've downloaded the trial version and MSSuperShape, but can't see any obvious way to generate the shapefiles from territories.

Is this possible? If so, how?

Thanks,
Geoff.

It isn't "MSSuperShape" but "MPSuperShape". I don't think Microsoft would like it either

We have a version of MPSuperShape in beta testing which can export shapes into shapefile.
However...

Territories in MapPoint are a bit limited. They are just lists of predefined areas (eg. zipcodes).
These cannot be converted into actual shapes unless there is a catalog of all these shape definitions. MapPoint does not expose this information - there for converting territories into shapes is very difficult. In theory it could be done with custom programming if you had the lists of shape definitions from a third party source. Note that the chances of these matching MapPoint's definitions exactly, is low.

Originally Posted by Winwaed

It isn't "MSSuperShape" but "MPSuperShape". I don't think Microsoft would like it either

My apologies - to both parties...

If we had shape files for any of the sub-components, we could assemble them ourselves from the same sort of list.

Thanks for the answer - it at least stops me looking for something that doesn't exist.

Geoff.

Is it actually MapPoint Territories using the MapPoint Territories functionality? Or is it drawing objects e.g. freeform drawing objects on the map? It IS possible to export the drawing objects.

Second -- if it is actually MapPoint Territories, then what is the geography? If it is County or State then it should not be too hard to assemble from a public domain GIS boundary file. If it is census tracts or Zip codes then it would be a bit more work.

Eric

The territories are MapPoint territories; they're built from UK outer postcodes. Unfortunately, the shapefiles for UK postcodes don't appear to be in the public domain (if anyone happens to know a source for them, this would be very helpful!).

Thanks,
Geoff.

How hard would it be to trace over the territory boundaries with the freeform drawing tool? Would it take more than a couple hours?

Eric

Yes - the boundaries aren't simple and don't follow (any) straight lines. To do it with any reasonable accuracy would be a lot of work.

well that sucks, that is exactly what I want to do - I have custom territories set up based on US post code in Map Point 2006. I want to export these to KML or something that google maps will read...and was hoping that MPSuperShape would do this, but it looks like it only operates on user made Shapes and custom territories aren't considered Shapes I guses.

Any other options out there?

I don't think US Zip Code boundaries are that expensive... as long as you're not buying a Premium dataset that is the most up to date. However, you'd need a different tool to combine the zip code such as MapInfo Pro or Manifold.

Eric