topic Re: How to edit an existing annotation template in ArcGIS Pro Questions

How to edit an existing annotation template

ccowin_odfw — Mon, 08 May 2023 17:27:03 GMT

Trying to figure out how to edit an annotation template. Tried the properties in Contents and in Manage Templates pane and both show the symbol but neither actually let me edit them.

Re: How to edit an existing annotation template

SLouq — Mon, 08 May 2023 18:54:37 GMT

Make sure your annotation layer is selected in the Contents, click Edit on the menu bar, Right click your annotation layer and select the annotation you want to edit, click attributes in the Edits menu and you should be able to edit your annotation from there.

Re: How to edit an existing annotation template

ccowin_odfw — Mon, 08 May 2023 19:36:52 GMT

That is not modifying the template unfortunately. I'm aware how to change individual annotation rows.

I would like to modify an existing template so that when I add new annotations it uses the modified template. I'm not sure what data the original annotation layer came from (its a signed route layer that provides all the interstate and highway numbers) so I can't just go back to it and create a brand new one.

Re: How to edit an existing annotation template

SLouq — Mon, 08 May 2023 19:47:24 GMT

sorry I misunderstood the question. Unfortunately, I've never made an annotation template for my annotation.

Re: How to edit an existing annotation template

Scott_Harris — Tue, 09 May 2023 19:53:12 GMT

@ccowin_odfw Try this:

Select an existing annotation feature that has the symbol you want.
Open Manage Templates > New > click Template From Feature
From the template properties dialog, you can modify the annotation's text if you want, give it a name, etc. > click OK
When you go to use the new template, it may look like there's a problem with the template - giving a warning about a bad symbol attribute (I'm actually not sure why this is quite yet) - but the template should work to create new annotation features using the desired symbol.

Re: How to edit an existing annotation template

ccowin_odfw — Fri, 12 May 2023 18:29:05 GMT

So unfortunately I don't know where the original data came from so I can't recreate it from the feature class as I said in my original post. Thankfully I was able to figure it out, you actually access it from within the GeoDatabase in Catalog instead of the Content. This actually make more sense because that settings is shared at the geodatabase level, the actual ArcGIS Project doesnt contain that data. You can just bring in that annotation layer and it will have the same templates everywhere and saves on one project will be translated to all projects that use the data.

Right click the Annotation Feature Class within the GeoDatabase
Select "Annotation Feature Class Properties"
In the new pane select "Annotation Classes"
Click pencil icon to edit individual Annotation Classes:

Re: How to edit an existing annotation template

Scott_Harris — Fri, 12 May 2023 19:24:37 GMT

That makes sense. I assumed you the meant feature templates used for creating annotations, and not referring to the annotation class itself. Thanks for closing the loop.

Re: How to edit an existing annotation template

ccowin_odfw — Fri, 12 May 2023 19:38:18 GMT

Yeah lot of words that are used in similar ways but refer to different things.