ArcGIS Pro freezes when drawing textboxes

Question

I am working in ArcGIS Pro version 3.5.3 but the issue has occurred in previous versions as well. At seemingly random times when I am adding a textbox to a map layout, ArcGIS Pro freezes my entire computer, necessitating a reboot. It has also frozen up while I am copy/pasting textboxes within a layout as well. I have not had it freeze up while executing any other function. Wondering if anybody else has had similar issues?

RTPL_AU · Answer

@WillMulligan @VenkataKondepati 
Freeze / Crash on any Copy process in 3.5 are described elsewhere under Questions, but not yet accepted as a bug as far as I know. Please lodge cases so we can get this looked at properly.
https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/copy-issues-in-pro-3-5-1-3-5-2-3-5-3-help-diagnose/m-p/1651316#M99016

Are you adding empty straight text boxes or does it occur with rectangle, poly or dynamic text as well?

I have seen some weirdness in re-sizing text boxes. If feasible I switch them between rectangle text and straight text  and back which sometimes fixes it.

With 3.5.x whenever I can, I try to use the CTRL+Click & Drag method to duplicate items in a layout (works for both the Contents pane and in the Layout itself.

For copying map content to another map you can drag the destination map outside of the main Pro window and then drag from the source map's Contents Pane into the other map. For me, copying map layers is the most likely user interaction to cause the first freeze, which seems to then get worse the longer you ignore it. 
On a slower computer the increasing duration of these freezes may not be obvious, and the first major thing you experience is a blackout of the Pro windows or a full crash.

I wonder if changing the Display rendering Options resets something in Pro as changing the quality or acceleration setting seem to fix things for a while until the next driver/Windows/Nvidia/AMD/Intel/Pro update at which point changing the setting back 'fixes' things again. I have not yet found a consistent combo that 'just works'; more of a it works after changing, no matter what I change it to.
It may have more of an effect on lower spec machines.

When doing dumps & logs, try to replicate the issue with data that does not point to anything commercially in confidence or PII; you don't want to have to write a please explain to a client/citizen.

VenkataKondepati · Answer

Yes, I’ve run into similar freezes in ArcGIS Pro (3.5.x and earlier) when working with layout text elements. It usually happens while adding or copy/pasting textboxes, and not during other operations. A few things I’ve seen help:

* Graphics drivers – make sure your GPU drivers are fully updated. Textbox rendering in layouts does touch the graphics subsystem.

* Disable hardware acceleration – you can test this under Options → Display to see if it reduces the crashes.

* System resources – ArcGIS Pro can spike memory during layout editing. Closing other memory-heavy apps sometimes helps.

* Workaround – instead of copy/paste, try duplicating the element in the Contents pane. It’s more stable in some cases.

If it consistently happens on your machine, I’d also suggest capturing a crash dump and opening a case with Esri Support—they’ve been tracking similar layout text element issues.

Curious if others in the community are seeing this behavior in 3.5.3 or if it’s machine specific.

Regards,

Venkat