topic Re: Leader lines dissapear if annotation color changed in Mapping Questions

Leader lines dissapear if annotation color changed

ChrisDonohue__GISP — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 17:48:28 GMT

I have a Zoning map that my employer would like to be updated by changing the Zoning labels color from blue to black. It has over 1,300 Zoning labels and was done in ArcMap 10.2.1.

The labels are annotation that have been saved to the mxd as map annotation (Convert Labels to Annotation, saved in the mxd). This was done as many parts of the map are very complex and labeling those parts in an legible way required the use of leader lines and lots of manual placement (Maplex was a good starting point, but wasn't cutting it). So the map is a mix of labels - some with leader lines, some without.

Now here's the problem. I can manually select lots of labels at once with the Select Elements tool and change the color to black, but if any labels are selected with leader lines, the leader lines disappear when the color change is applied. Not sure why this is happening. Oddly enough, if just labels with leader lines are selected and the color change applied, the leader lines remain and there is no problem.

So here's some questions:

1. Instead of manually editing this, Is there a script or other process that could do the color change? Some ideas:

- A process that changes the color and doesn't have the side effect of dropping the leader lines?

- Any automated way to query all the labels and select only the ones with leader lines?

2. If manual editing is continued, is there a different way to select many labels at once, change the color, and have it not drop the leader lines (instead of using the Select Elements tool)?

Thanks in advance,

Chris Donohue, GISP

Re: Leader lines dissapear if annotation color changed

Randy_A_Stapleton — Mon, 16 May 2016 12:46:57 GMT

Chris,

Did you figure out a solution? I am having the same problem. all of my leader lines disappear when i update my text.

Thanks,

Re: Leader lines dissapear if annotation color changed

ChrisDonohue__GISP — Mon, 16 May 2016 15:57:14 GMT

Unfortunately, I never found a solution. So it ended up being a manual edit slog.

Chris Donohue, GISP

Re: Leader lines dissapear if annotation color changed

Randy_A_Stapleton — Mon, 16 May 2016 16:03:37 GMT

Chris, I found that updating text in the attributes table, not the attributes window, keeps my leader lines in place. See attached photo

Re: Leader lines dissapear if annotation color changed

Randy_A_Stapleton — Mon, 16 May 2016 16:06:54 GMT

I don't think you can change color in the attributes table though...

Re: Leader lines dissapear if annotation color changed

KatarzynaDrozynska — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 16:54:30 GMT

This is the reply I got from ESRI Support:

"I have been researching the issue you are having a little deeper and it looks as through storing symbols such as the leader lines as inline annotation can cause many problems when adjusting or modifying the features. The recommended workflow is to instead create a symbol class based off of symbol ID. I have included a support article below referencing this behavior and how to create the symbol ID. Please let me know this helps with the display issues you are seeing.
What is inline annotation?: http://support.esri.com/technical-article/000008620"

I didn't try it out yet though...