Adjusting Map Boundaries in Identify Mode

I love Identify mode for specific situations and learned about it in this forum a while back (so thank you). What I can’t figure out is how to turn it off or get back to my map boundaries while using it.

Here is what I am doing:

1. Pull up a saved search for a specific plant genus or species within a portion of the West Coast (USA).

  1. Turn on Identify mode to go through all of the observations within my selected map area.

  2. Now, I am done with all of the observations within that portion of the map and want to move north or south on the map a bit to capture a few more, but I can’t get back to the map or turn off Identify mode (so I can get back to the map).

  3. (this is the step I would like to eliminate) So what I end up doing is having to start a brand new search to get out of Identify. Then redraw a new map boundary (trying to figure out exactly where I left off on the last one…and usually that requires me redrawing the boundary a few times to figure it out), then back to Identify (repeat all steps above). It is tedious to have to repeat this step over and over.

How can I get back to the map from Identify mode so I can select a new area that connects with the area I just searched?

You might ask, why not just draw a larger map area at the start? Because getting thousands of observations (or even hundreds if I have limited time) feels overwhelming…so sometimes, I want to work through a smaller map area and then if I have more time, move to the next area on the map, etc.

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I think the easiest way is to modify the URL. So if your Identify URL was https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?nelat=45.90014315302335&nelng=-119.87760381773114&swlat=44.616479470769214&swlng=-122.97574834898114, you would cut out /identify and end up with https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=45.90014315302335&nelng=-119.87760381773114&swlat=44.616479470769214&swlng=-122.97574834898114

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That worked. Thank you! This will save me time. Yay!

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@tiwane When I see an update in my notifications that a forum moderator has updated my post (in this case, adding tags), do I need to do anything to accept that change? Or just leave it? Thanks. This is the second time it has happened, and I’m just not sure if I need to do anything.

No, there’s nothing you need to do, although if you disagree you can let me know.

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