Is there a way around to put the North Arrow on the Data View ?

[PROBERT68]

As I am working on Ski Areas on our Forest, I am putting all the layers and imagery together to my ArcMap. My question to you is that is there a way around for me to add the North star to the Data View ? I know that you can do that in the Layout View . Because in the Data View , the North Arrow is greyout. The reason I asked is because the Imagery I have on my ArcMap is hard to know where the North is.. I have the copy of that Ski Area in a PDF but it looks like it is skewed...

The person who drew it is an actually draw the area and shows where the Trails, Lifts, Parking... It does not show anything with the map scale...  It is more of "Welcome" to the audience of that Ski area.

Do you have any suggest for me to insert the North Arrow on the Data View or am I crazy to ask ? or Has anyone have done it before ?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

make a shapefile or featureclass and draw your own 'North Arrow' as a layer.  If you keep it simple then you could be done in a minute or two.  If you want a real fancy one, then it will take longer

[PROBERT68]

One thing before you post it, I open and google to that Ski Area and then you can navigate it and there is a compass in it...

See here  This is Monarch Mountains and that helps me to see 3D here and compare with ArcGIS...You can see the compass just to the right side of the image.

[DanPatterson_Retired]

That is Google,... ArcGIS Earth, same thing, just not arcmap

[PROBERT68]

Yes that is Google onlline.. You can use the control + right click on your mouse and it becomes 3D. It works on mine...

but yes I know about ArcEarth as well.

[DarrenWiens2]

You can do this with an annotation feature class, using the ESRI North font.

What is annotation?—Help | ArcGIS Desktop 

Aligned to north. Top is annotation, bottom is static text element (text is north font equivalent of "Text").

Reprojected, so north is no longer straight up. Note annotation rotates to point to original north.

[PROBERT68]

Looks cool.  Actually I just played it around with ArcEarth but I know it doesn't a good job...Kind of slow to me.