I am a GIS analyst working for regional govt. I quite often have to create quite complicated interactive maps for non-gis users who need them for presentations. These non-GIS users then need to have ArcGIS experience in order to just disaplay layers. This often leads to confusion when for example the contents window has been switched off my mistake, and other little problems due to not having enough experience with the software.
My question is…Does anyone know of any viewers which can basically display arcgis MXD documents but do not contain all the tools. I basically just need to display the layer groups/layers and keep their symbology, be able to switch the layers on and off, and possibly do a few other things like search for attributes, alter opacity. But the last two points are not really too important.
Best Answer
ArcReader may meet your needs. It has all the basic map navigation tools plus some basic features, e.g. Find, Identify, follow hyperlinks (if present), and spatial bookmarks.
Note, however, that ArcReader doesn't use MXDs. Instead it relies on PMFs, which are created with the ArcGIS Publisher plugin. That plugin costs $2500 for a single use license, or may be included with an enterprise license (if you have one).