[Qgis-user] Basic Help

[Louise Duffy]

I don't know if this is the correct format for asking these questions, so please re-direct me as needed.

I am used ArcMap for many years to perform pretty basic stuff, but I am not finding QGIS to be as easy of a transition as I had hoped. I am now self-employed, doing some part time consulting for a few clients and I do not have the budget to buy ESRI products, especially when QGIS has such promise. 

In the past, my normal use of GIS was to pretty focused on being able to connect dots from GPS data, digitize features using aerial photography and other basemaps. Producing a variety of maps for projects that included exported tables of that data to show coordinates, lengths, area or other characteristics.

I downloaded QGIS version 2.14.19-Essen. I am not familiar with programming languages, scripts or other behind the scenes stuff. When I have looked at tutorials QGIS has, the screens do not match what I see or the process does not work as expected. I don't know if I am missing something with the install or just need a friendly guide to point the way.

Right now, I specifically need help with four things: add basemaps from external sources (aerial, street, usgs quad), calculate/display area of polygons in attribute table; add X,Y coordinates of existing points to attribute table; search for and add points based on X,Y coordinates. 

Thanks!
Louise 

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