topic Re: Labels not showing special characters in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Labels not showing special characters

JordanSeider — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:06:58 GMT

I have labels on my map that contain special characters as parts of place names (examples: ʔ, ·, ⱡ). They appear correct in the attribute table but on the display and when I export as a PDF, the characters change to "?".

Re: Labels not showing special characters

SLouq — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:16:00 GMT

make sure eyou are using the right formatting in your label expressions.

https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/special-characters-with-text-formatting-tags/td-p/539055

Re: Labels not showing special characters

JordanSeider — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:22:18 GMT

Unfortunately, I cannot find any HTML codes for the characters I need.

Re: Labels not showing special characters

KenBuja — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:23:52 GMT

Have you tried other fonts that contain those special characters?

Re: Labels not showing special characters

JordanSeider — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:35:06 GMT

Okay, I have found the relevant HTML codes. My label expression is as follows but no matter what font I try, it does not change the label.

Function FindLabel ([CmmntN1]) NewString = Replace([CmmntN1], "ⱡ", "ⱡ") NewString = Replace([CmmntN1], "ʔ", "ʔ") NewString = Replace([CmmntN1], "·", "·") FindLabel = NewString End Function

Re: Labels not showing special characters

JordanSeider — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:40:16 GMT

Now I realize, even after updating the attribute table with the correct symbols and saving the edits, when I reopen the attribute table, the characters return to ?.

Re: Labels not showing special characters

SLouq — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 19:46:34 GMT

If you are not getting attributes in your attribute table the only thing I can think of is the data type for that field is wrong.

Re: Labels not showing special characters

JordanSeider — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 20:42:29 GMT

The attributes are fine, just those few special characters change from ʔ to ?

Re: Labels not showing special characters

SLouq — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 20:49:10 GMT

Look at your field length in field view

Re: Labels not showing special characters

JordanSeider — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 21:02:54 GMT

Field is "text" and length is 80

Re: Labels not showing special characters

JordanSeider — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 23:10:50 GMT

Had to manually change the special characters to a different, unique string of characters (eg., "$#a", "$#b", etc.). Then, I managed some success with a label expression in Python:

def FindLabel([Label]): new = [Label].replace("$#a", "ʔ").replace("$#b", "q̓").replace("$#c", "ō").replace("$#c", "ō").replace("$#d", "á").replace("$#e", "é").replace("$#f", "ŝ").replace("$#g", "ś").replace("$#h", "ū").replace("$#i", "·").replace("$#j", "ⱡ") return new

For example: I would write the Label field for "abʔcⱡde" as "ab$#ac$#jde" and then use the expression above to plot the labels with the correct characters.

Re: Labels not showing special characters

Mahdi_Ch — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 17:06:50 GMT

Happy to hear it's resolved. Although I think there should be a better way for the first part to not do that manually. I will add that later if I figure out.

By the way, to make this function more general to work in other cases and also to avoid writing very long lines which are hard to read and are prone to error, you can define all the changes in a dictionary and pass the key and value pairs of that dictionary to replace().

# a dictionary that can define required changes # This way it can be edited easily changes = {"$#a": "ʔ", "$#b": "q̓", "$#c": "ō", "$#c": "ō", "$#d": "á", "$#e": "é", "$#f": "ŝ", "$#g": "ś", "$#h": "ū", "$#i": "·", "$#j": "ⱡ"} def fix_label_char(label:str, change_dict:dict, report:bool=False)->str: """Takes a str(text)and a dictionry of changes then applies it to the text and returns the new text (if any changes made), otherwise original text gets returned. It can also print the changes if report=True report is off by default """ new_label = label for key,val in change_dict.items(): new_label = new_label.replace(key, val) # report section if label == new_label and report: print(f'No changes applied to {label}!') elif label != new_label and report: print(f'Changed {label} ---> {new_label}') else: pass return new_label

Re: Labels not showing special characters

JordanSeider — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 17:02:59 GMT

Thanks! And yes, my coding experience is limited to R so I kind of just brute-forced my way through StackExchange to make that expression for this particular use-case. I just wished that the Arc attribute table would preserve the special characters.