I spent last summer at the Rocky Mountain Biological Labratory http://rmbl.org/rockymountainbiolab/ and I broght back shape files of ponds. I would like to know how to view and get area measurments of my pond polygons!
You can't add shapefiles to ArcGIS Explorer online - it only spports adding service related data.
The easiest solution is to use ArcGIS Explorer Desktop instead, and then add the shapefile to your map (add contents)
Bizarrely when i click on a polygon feature you see a popup containing the feature attributes, but it does not contain the area field. Possibly just my data or possibly a bug I don't know but will find out.
so a couple of alternatives - 1. you could use the measure tool to digitize around your areas, but this may get laborious if you have quite a few.
2. You could use the Layer Attributes SDK sample which presents all the attributes for a layer in a data grid. to save you some time I have compiled the add-in for you and attached it to this message. Save it to your hard disk then follow the steps in this blog post to add it to the Explorer desktop application. You can then see the attributes for all the features, including length and area, in the shapefile
