Keep labels from drawing over annotations

Crinoid — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:20:49 GMT

I'm pulling my hair out trying to solve this problem of labels drawing over annotations. I have a large-font annotation naming a valley that's crisscrossed with labeled roads. I want the road labels to avoid the annotation (either drawing somewhere else or not drawing at all if they can't avoid the annotation), but I can't make this happen. Even though the annotation barrier weight is High and the label weight is 0, the labels ignore the existence of the annotation and draw right on top of it. If I turn the annotations layer off, the road labels don't even redraw. It's like the road labels can't see that the annotation exists. Is this a bug or am I missing a setting?

Other info:

Using Maplex
There's definitely room for the road labels to draw somewhere else.
Label priority ranking doesn't factor in annotations, but I still tried moving the road labels to the bottom of the priority list, but nothing changed.
I tried creating a new line feature class as a test, and even with default "basic line" label settings, the labels still draw over the annotation. "Never remove" is unchecked on the labels.
I tried re-generating the annotation fresh, but it still happens. The annotation for the valley name is not feature-linked and unplaced labels are not converted to unplaced annotations.
Notably, the road labels avoid the valley name before converting to an annotation (when it's a label).

I'd really like a solution that avoids having to remake the annotations, though, because I've put a lot of time into editing them after converting from labels. Do you have ideas on what else I can try?

topic Keep labels from drawing over annotations in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Keep labels from drawing over annotations