Annotation background color in ArcGIS Pro

Question

I have annotation established in ArcGIS Pro (2.1.3) that I set up originally as label classes where three classes of text were set up with different colors for leaderlines and the corresponding outline of the framing box for the text. This box had a white background. The annotation took this stuff great, but afterwards I found that I need to change the background color for certain annotations from white to another color.

How/where do I edit this in ArcGIS Pro?

Thanks,

Scott

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ScottCostello · Answer

Thank you, Wendy. That's got me on the right track!

Just as an aside, the fact that you can *only* get to the Annotation Feature Class Properties tab through catalog and not from contents/properties is simply baffling and non-intuitive to me. Maybe it is 18 years of ArcMap UI talking, but I imagine that to be a non-unique bias for longtime GIS folks that are new Pro users.

Cheers,
Scott

p.s. The same info was in the Support pages, but it was still not clear to me that you had to go through Catalog. That tidbit is kinda buried. Suggest ESRI add more screenshots to the support pages for clarity.

WendyHarrison · Answer

Hi Scott,

there are two ways you can do this.  A temporary way and a more permanent way.

the temporary way is using symbol substitution. this change does not edit your data. it only exists for the project.

right click on your anno in the contents pane and select Symbology.  this will open the Symbology pane.  In the Symbol Substitution group select the Substitute symbols in collection radio button and double click on the symbol.  Change the symbol as you wish from here.

the more permanent way is to edit the symbol in the annotation feature class.

In the catalog pane browse to your annotation feature class. right click on it and select Annotation feature class properties.  This opens up the Annotation Feature Class Properties pane.

If you have feature linked annotation and want the symbol change to be reflected in updates you need to click on the Annotation Classes tab, double click on the annotation subclass you are looking to edit and then select the symbol tab.  Make your symbol changes here.  Now for all newly created annotation in this subclass, the new symbol will be used.  To change the existing features, you'll need to edit the symbol id field to be the newly created symbol id from the collection.

If you have annotation that isn't feature linked you can either create a new symbol in the collection by clicking the plus sign or double click on a symbol to use that as a starting point.  Once symbol edits are made and the new symbol is created, just edit the symbol id of the features to point to the newly created symbol.

thanks

Wendy