Creating A Tour in Google Earth

Tour creation tutorial

This quick tutorial explains how you can create a Google Tour yourself, and hopefully upload it here. :) As an example, we will create a tour of the capital cities of my country, Canada.

You will need

• One copy of Google Earth
• An idea for a tour
• A quick skim through the Hints and Tips page.

What to do..

** Click on any of the pictures to see a larger view of what to do.

1. Browse to the first placemark of your location (Canada's Capital City) in GE.
   1. I generally like to start with an overview of the area (if suitable):

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2. Click for larger
1. Go to Add -> Placemark or just press Ctrl N to create the first placemark. A window will appear.

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2. Click for larger
1. While this window is open, adjust the properties of the placemark with one or more of the following methods:
   • Use the mouse to move the placemark around on the map.
   • Click on the icon inside the Name box to change this icon.
   • Click on the Advanced box to change more properties:
   • Label and icon properties in the Style tab
   • Exact positioning in the Location tab
   • Viewpoint, in the View tab
1. Give the placemark a name, and add a description. See example below:

1. Create a new folder for the tour, by clicking on My Places then on New Folder. Type Canadian Capitals in the New Folder window and click Ok. The window will look like this:

1. Click on Ok and you will have your first placemark in your tour:

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2. Click for larger
1. Browse to the next location in your tour (Provincial Capitals), in this example Sydney:

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2. Click for larger
1. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 above to set the name and description of this placemark.
2. Expand My Places in the Folder view, either by clicking that folder or the little arrow next to it, then click on the Canadian Capitals folder. After this, click OK and your second placemark is saved to this folder also:

1. You now have two locations in your tour. Note that GE will put your placemarks in the folder in reverse order, so you might need to re-arrange them by dragging them around:

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2. Click for larger
1. Repeat steps 2 to 9 for all of the placemarks (Capital City Locations) on your tour. Eventually you will have a complete list of locations for your tour: See example below:

1. Try out your tour by clicking on the top level folder in the list (in this case Canadian Capitals), then clicking the play icon at the bottom of the list. Your tour is complete!
2. Your tour will be saved under the My Places folder for you automatically. However, if you'd like to save this tour separately so you can send it to someone or upload it, you should save it to a separate file. Just right-click the top level folder (here it's the Canadian Capitals folder), then select Save As.... You can then save the tour like any regular file and send it or upload it here. :)

1. Have fun!!!