Customizing data frames

About customizing data frames

In layout view, you see geographic data in a data frame on the virtual page. You can use the data frame to emphasize the geographic data on the map by adding a border, background, or drop shadow.

Adding a border to a data frame

Steps:

1. Right-click the data frame in the table of contents and click Properties.
2. Click the Frame tab on the Data Frame Properties dialog box.
3. Click the Border drop-down arrow and choose a border symbol.
4. Click the Color drop-down arrow and choose a color.
5. Type an x and y gap to offset the border from the edge of the data frame.
6. Type a value for Rounding; this is the percentage to round the corners of the border.
7. Click OK.

Adding a background to a data frame

Setting a background can be very important if you are creating a map service that will be overlaid on top of other data. In such cases, you should explicitly set a data frame background color instead of leaving the default null background color. The map service will treat the background color as transparent, so avoid choosing a color found elsewhere in your map. To avoid white areas of your map becoming transparent, you can set the background color to near-white (example: RGB 254, 255, 255).

Steps:

1. Right-click the data frame in the table of contents and click Properties.
2. Click the Frame tab on the Data Frame Properties dialog box.
3. Click the Background drop-down arrow and choose a background.
4. Click the Color drop-down arrow and choose a color.
5. Type an x and y gap to offset the border from the edge of the data frame.
6. Type a value for Rounding; this is the percentage to round the corners of the border.
7. Click OK.

Adding a drop shadow to a data frame

Steps:

1. Click the data frame in the table of contents and click Properties.
2. Click the Frame tab on the Data Frame Properties dialog box.
3. Click the Drop Shadow drop-down arrow and choose a drop shadow.
4. Click the Color drop-down arrow and choose a color.
5. Type an x and y gap to offset the border from the edge of the data frame.
6. Type a value for Rounding; this is the percentage to round the corners of the border.
7. Click OK.