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User Guide



Marking Locations

This tutorial describes the basics of marking locations within Google Earth. You will learn to create, edit and position a placemark for Ayers Rock in Australia. In addition, you can watch this video:

Note - This tutorial describes just some of the ways you can use placemarks in Google Earth. To learn more, see Marking Places in the Google Earth User Guide.

Creating a Placemark for Ayers Rock

You can use placemarks to mark any location on the planet. Once you have created a placemark, it appears in the My Places folder in the Places panel. You can then quickly go to the marked location at any time by double-clicking the placemark in the Places panel. In addition, you can edit, move, share or delete any placemark. Learn more.

Placemark in Google Earth

In this exercise, you will create a new placemark for Ayers Rock. To do this:

  1. Go to Ayers Rock. For the purpose of this exercise, the quickest way to do this is to enter the following latitude and longitude coordinates in the Fly To tab in the Search panel (see diagram above):

    25 20'42.28"S 131 2'6.24"E

    Press Enter. Google Earth flies to Ayers Rock. (If you prefer, you can search for this location instead of using the coordinates listed above. Learn more in the user guide or this tutorial.)
  2. Click the Placemark button in the toolbar Placemark button. The New dialogue box appears and a placemark icon appears in the exact centre of the 3D viewer.
  3. Try moving around the placemark by clicking and dragging it. You can use this method to move the placemark to any location in the 3D viewer.
  4. In the New dialogue box, enter the following information.Ignore the other fields for now:
    • Name: "Ayers Rock"
    • Description: "A very large rock in Australia."
  5. Click OK. Google Earth displays your placemark in the 3D viewer and at the top of the My Places folder in the Places panel.
  6. To view your placemark at any time, double-click the placemark in the Places panel. To simply display the balloon description of the placemark, single-click it in the 3D viewer or the Places panel.

Note - A placemark will only appear in the 3D viewer if it is ticked. If you cannot see a placemark in the 3D viewer, make sure that the box next to it in the Places panel is ticked.

Editing Your Placemark

You can edit, move or delete any placemark that appears in the My Places folder. To edit and move the Ayers Rock placemark:

  1. Right-click (CTRL-click on the Mac) the Ayers Rock placemark in the 3D viewer or in the Places panel. Choose Properties. The Edit Placemark dialogue box appears.
  2. Click and drag the placemark icon to the east end of Ayers Rock (this means if the 3D viewer is positioned with north-up orientation, move the placemark to the right).
  3. In the Edit Placemark dialogue box, change the following information:
    • Name: "East Side of Ayers Rock"
    • Description: "The east side of a very large rock in Australia."
  4. Click OK. Google Earth saves the new position and placement of the placemark.
  5. To delete the placemark, right-click (CTRL-click on the Mac) the placemark in the 3D viewer or in the Places panel and choose Delete.

Edit Placemark

Tip - You can tilt the terrain or navigate around a placemark to get exactly the perspective you like and then save that view so that this perspective is shown each time you visit the placemark. Simply navigate to the perspective you want and when you edit the placemark, in the Edit Placemark dialogue box, click the View tab and click Snapshot current view.

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