I have used MapPoint 2004 only for a couple of days on U.K. data and I have a few questions

1. The boundary of a U.K. local authority is not very prominent. Is there any way I can display a style of my own choosing.
2. I would like to show wards on my maps - I know the postcodes which make up a ward, but I have failed to to be able to use this data to set up a territory.
3. I would like to show super output areas on my maps - I know the postcodes which make up a super output area, but I have failed to to be able to use this data to set up a territory.

Can anyone help with these rather elementary issues?

Hi Momo, and welcome to MapPoint.

When you open the package select Data Map on the navigation toolbar, then zoom in say to London and that’s the clearest view you can get of LA boundaries. If you have data coded by local authority you can read that in using Import Data Wizard and thereby shade the LA areas getting clearer delimitation. HOWEVER the LA boundaries incorporated into MapPoint include shire counties, London boroughs, metropolitan counties and unitary authorities. It does not include the local authorities within a shire county eg in the case of Wiltshire, boundaries for Kennet, North Wiltshire, Salisbury and West Wiltshire aren’t included while Swindon (unitary authority) is. If you need more boundary detail then LA and SOA boundary data is available from National Statistics in both .shp and MID/MIF formats (separately for Scotland and NI). These files are importable by MapPoint using the Spatial Data Import option on the Tools menu, but in my experience actually succeeding in doing this will be a very fraught process. Also you’d end up with a collection of polygons that aren’t really part of the MapPoint geographies; you would be able to make the boundaries a style of your own choosing using Line Color which is good but beyond that the polygons can only really be used for colour filling and points-in-polygon queries.

You can't create territories from individual postcodes. The smallest element is the postcode sector and unfortunately postcode sector and LA boundaries don't match.

My approach to mapping using wards or Super Output Area data has been to put map symbols at the area centroids. I’ve put an example as number 5 on my MapPoint Gallery at

MapPoint Gallery

The ward boundaries were drawn manually from a hard-copy map using the Freeform drawing tool. The SOA data was downloaded from the National statistics site and geo-referenced. The result is quite effective and meets the requirements of my clients. If detailed boundaries are very important in your work then maybe you’ll need something closer to a GIS solution than MapPoint.

Hope this helps

David