ArcMap provides many tools and features for visualizing, maintaining, and analyzing your GIS data. The tools have default settings, but many can be changed to suit your workflows. Investing some time to explore those ubiquitous Options dialog boxes can pay off in time savings down the road.

Below are some of the options that can help your ArcMap work go faster.

Tools Options dialog box (Tools menu > Options)

• The General tab has some options that are useful when you or your users are working with a map in Data view. For example, you can set how information displays in the Identify dialog box. By default, when you identify a feature, the attributes for features in the top-most layer in the Table of Contents display in the dialog box. If you're working with a map that has scale-dependent layers, the top-most layer may not even be displaying at your current scale. Setting the option to show attributes only for visible layers can be a time saver.
• By default, the color used to indicate a hyperlinked feature is a darkish blue. The blue doesn't stand out all that well against some symbol colors. You can change the color to make your hyperlinks more visible to map users.
• Do you ever create map text or graphics on the map using one of the Draw tools? Each time you complete one piece of text or a graphic, the Draw tool inactivates and you have to select it again to draw the next item. If this annoys you, set the option to keep drawing tools active after creating a graphic. This is a big time saver if you're creating many graphic items in one session.

Selection Options dialog box (Selection menu > Options)

Maybe you already know that you can customize the default interactive selection method and selection color, but did you know about the selection tolerance option? The selection tolerance is the range within which your mouse pointer must be to select a feature, and by default it is only three pixels. The selection tolerance applies to the Select Features, Edit, Identify, Hyperlink, and other tools.

Finding the right spot to click to activate a hyperlink can be especially frustrating with a small selection tolerance. If you are creating a map with hyperlinks or html popups that will be distributed to others, increasing the selection tolerance to 10 pixels will make your users' experience much better. This option is saved with the map document, so anyone opening the .MXD will also have the larger selection tolerance setting.

Editing Options dialog box (Editing toolbar > Editor menu> Options)

• The Task drop-down list on the Editor toolbar contains many edit tasks. Typically, you have to scroll down to select tasks at the bottom of the list. In the Edit Tasks tab in the Editing Options dialog box, you can group the tasks you use most often to have them display at the top of the Task drop-down list. You will no longer have to scroll down the list to select a task you want to perform.
• To create a custom group, in the dialog box:
• Click Create Group.
• Click the default group name twice slowly to select it, then rename it.
• Use the arrow keys to move tasks up from the other groups into your custom group.
• Click OK.

• In the Attributes tab, you can set the option to display the Attributes dialog box after creating a new feature. This is handy when you are creating features that have attribute domains set up and you want to be sure they are entered before the feature is saved.

These are just a small sample of the many options you can set in ArcMap. Think about the tasks you do most frequently, then check your options for letting the software do some of the work for you.