Four Color Map

I have a list of the 50 US states plus DC in an Excel document in a named range where the first row is a column heading.

How do I make a four-color map
where each state gets its own color that is different from its neighbors, and
where I can zoom to each state.

TIA,

Far Farley

This sounds like a classic maths problem...

Is this for homework? If not, why do you want 4 specifically?

Richard

Richard,

This is the closest I have gotten to being "carded" in ages (I'm 57). But from the days a number of decades ago when I did do homework, I recall that all it takes is four colors to make sure that no contiguous states have the same color (Is memory serving me correctly?). If four is the minimum, I would prefer that, as opposed to having more colors that simply hide information due to the "rainbow" effect.

I'm making a sales territory map. When I select a single state, I would like it to have contrast from its neighbors. I made the various state maps from the generic MapPoint map, using the smallest rectangle in which the state would fit, but the lack of contrast obscures the state borders.

The perfect solution would be similar to clicking on a state name on the generic map... click on Kansas, Kansas is brightly highlighted, and everything else is grayed out. Of course, if you then draw a SELECT box around Kansas, the highlighting is turned off.

Some of the MapPoint color selections I have seen use very similar shades of the same color, providing little if any usable contrast for an Executive report. Execs get annoyed if they have to sit and study map legends, as opposed to having adequate contrast that instantly provides information from the data.

So given all that (too much information ???), can MapPoint do four color maps?

Or, can I do a select/highlight, then manipulate that view for scale and select the area I want, without the highlighting being turned off?

Thanks,

Far

Yes it struck me as a bit arbitrary - and I can imagine a teacher asking school kids to do it for a specific case. Solving in the general case is a post-doc maths project!

I think you would have to do it manually. Eg. you could assign each state a value, or create territories. MapPoint is limited to a pre-defined set of palettes. Yes these are pastel shades - one of them does cover the spectrum, so this is best you'll find.

The only other option if you really must have four bright colors is to draw each shape and (again) set the colors manually. Eric Frost's "Single State Mapper" could be used for this (yes we resell it :-) but it is also available on this site here). This comes with the States set to white. You then manually set each one to a bright color.


Richard