topic Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues in ArcGIS Online Questions

Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

ClintOffutt1 — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 16:53:34 GMT

What is going on with the polygon labels? Something has changed recently. I have several polygon with the same shape, but different labels. For years, if I tried to label multiple layers, only the top label would draw. AGOL doesn't have different labeling positions within the polygon.

I just had a user tell me now they are all labeling right on top of each other! Attention ESRI web map developers, what is going on here? What has changed and how do we fix it??!!

Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

RussRoberts — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 17:23:35 GMT

Are you able to share the map and we can take a look. The labeling in a polygon is fixed to the centroid of the shape and then you could use the offset to place the label within a certain offset of the centroid.

You can share the map and layers into a group and invite russell_jsapi if its not public

Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

ClintOffutt1 — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 19:32:20 GMT

Hi, I could share a similar map. I do not want to off set labels, because then, they are always offset regardless of if that is needed to "fit" more labels. The way the software previously behaved, is if there are multiple layers with identical features, only the top most label would draw.

please see this map: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/c86b811e922848d58ef2cfd110acf0b9

Under the OWNERSHIP group, zoom in until the parcel turn on, then turn on quick ref labels, party name labels, and leave parcels on with the default labels. They all overlap. These are all "views" of the same dataset, just created for labeling purposes. Sometimes users want different labeling options depending on how they are using the map. This NEVER happened before. It was working fine as soon as last week, then had a user report an issue and I've noticed it's on all my maps.

Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

ClintOffutt — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 17:07:56 GMT

Anyone know how to fix this labeling issues without using offset labels?

Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

RussRoberts — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 20:41:12 GMT

We are looking into improving this behavior for the upcoming release. As a workaround could you use a group layer with exclusive visibility and then the viewers of the map would toggle through those overlapping layers to see the layer and label that matches them.

Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

ClintOffutt — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 20:47:58 GMT

Hi, I am glad to know you are working improving that behavior. I also appreicate your suggestion on the group layer and might have to go that route until things improve. I just think it gets too complicated in this instance as those layers already reside within a group and most users of my maps are not wanting to dive into mulitple groupings. I just think the thing that is so strange is that these maps (I have 9 of them) never used to do this until very recently.

I would also like to know if you are able to improve other polygon labeling behaviors, such as placement anchors other than center of polygon and stacked labels to avoid polygon boundaries (not referring to multiline labeling expressions using Arcade for example).

Thanks again for the reply, RussRoberts.

Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

RussRoberts — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 21:07:56 GMT

This was a change from a deconfliction strategy project. We are working on exposing a static and none deconfliction mode within the labeling experience and detecting label deconfliction between duplicated/repeated layers.

We are working on automatic placement for polygons so if you zoom into one quadrant of the polygon where the center is not visible the label will dynamically fit into. Other placement options are on the roadmap but this previous one mentioned is one we are hoping to get into this upcoming release as well.

Stacked labels are not on our immediate roadmap but if you have samples of where you want to use these this helps us as we dive into discussions on feature priority.

Thanks!

Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

ClintOffutt — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 21:26:15 GMT

All good to know. Until the exposure of a static and none deconfliction mode, could we temporarily go back to how it was before the change from a deconfliction strategy project?

Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

CalvinHarmin — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 22:07:10 GMT

In my case the need/desire for stacked labels is ubiquitous. For my use case, it's more of a question of where I don't want stacked labeling as an option. But off the top of my head the most common labeling I would like to be stacked are Street names, full Addresses, Subdivisions, pretty much any location/name or string attribute. For certain concatenated/ more complex labeling using an Arcade expression I can at least use "\n" or TextFormatting.Newline to split labeling manually if using multiple fields.

Re: Recently occuring polygon labeling issues

ClintOffutt — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 13:32:49 GMT

Hi, Stacked labels (dynamically placed, not multi line expressions) are nice in cadastral mapping, especially when trying to label ownership of parcels for example. It prevents overlap of the feature, allows for more placement, and is simply more cartographically appealing.