Bookmarks

A bookmark is a navigation shortcut to a position on a map or perspective in a scene to return to later or share with others. Bookmarks can be used to create keyframes in an animation or pages in a bookmark map series.

Bookmarks can store and use time- or range-enabled layer properties. You can create a spatial bookmark for a specific point in time, such as a hurricane's location on a particular day, or create a bookmark for a specific range value, such as the second floor of a building.

To access bookmarks and their settings, on the Map tab, in the Navigate group, click Bookmarks Bookmarks. You can create bookmarks or import existing bookmarks from a file (ArcGIS Desktop .dat or ArcGIS Pro .bkmx). Bookmarks are listed with a thumbnail image, name, and optional description. Click a bookmark in the drop-down gallery to navigate to it.

Use the Bookmarks drop-down menu to do the following:

OptionDescription

Set the gallery filter

Choose the target map or scene if you have multiple maps with different bookmarks. The default is set to All.

Update Bookmark Update Bookmark and Remove Bookmark Remove Bookmark

Right-click a bookmark to update or delete it.

New Bookmark New Bookmark

Open the Create Bookmark dialog box to capture the current extent as a new bookmark from the active map or scene. Enabled time or range properties for layers are also stored.

Manage Bookmarks Manage Bookmarks

Open the Bookmarks pane, where you can work with and organize bookmarks.

Export Bookmarks Export Bookmarks

Open the Export dialog box to save bookmarks from the current map or scene to a bookmark file (.bkmx).

Import Bookmarks Import Bookmarks

Open the Import dialog box to browse to and add bookmarks to the current map or scene from a bookmark file (.bkmx, .dat).

Note:
Bookmark files imported from ArcScene may have display differences. ArcScene bookmarks only store the camera definition and do not include the coordinate system information. Results are best supported when imported to a local scene with the same coordinate system as the ArcScene document.

Ignore Time

Point to Bookmark Options to open the pull-right menu. Check to navigate to the camera perspective only for the bookmark without changing the time slider.

Ignore Range

Point to Bookmark Options to open the pull-right menu. Check the option to navigate to the camera perspective only for the bookmark without changing the range slider.

Show Descriptions

Point to Bookmark Options to open the pull-right menu. Check the option to display the bookmark description, if one is provided, when viewing the bookmarks in the bookmark drop-down list.

Display Bookmark Label

Point to Bookmark Options to open the pull-right menu. Check to display the bookmark name in the view when zooming to it. The name displays temporarily in the lower center of the view.

Note:

Bookmarks are referenced and organized by the map or scene in which they were created in the current project. Options such as updating bookmarks apply to bookmarks in the active view only. If an option is unavailable, ensure that you are in the correct active map or scene.

Navigate with bookmarks

Navigate to a bookmark in one of these ways:

  • Click a bookmark on the Bookmarks quick-access gallery on the Map tab.
  • In the Bookmarks pane, hover over the bookmark and click Zoom To Zoom To to center and zoom in on the exact bookmark location. Or click Pan To Pan To to center the view on the bookmark location without changing the scale.

If you want to navigate multiple views simultaneously using bookmarks, ensure that the views are linked, because bookmarks update the active map or scene view only.

To adjust the speed at which the navigation updates the view, set the Navigation Autopilot Speed setting to instant or a slower, gradual transition. Open the Options dialog box from the Project tab and click the Navigation tab. Move the slider to adjust the zoom time. The higher the value in seconds, the longer it takes to get to the bookmark.

You can still navigate with bookmarks even when map scale properties limit the display to certain scales.

Note:

If you're switching between maps and scenes, the extent may differ from the original view in which the bookmark was captured. For instance, bookmarks created in a scene but viewed in a map have a map extent derived from the original scene. If the bookmark was created in a map but viewed in a scene, the scene view displays perpendicularly.

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