The grouping did not work for me, but another suggestion further back in this thread did the trick: selecting the anno elements within the map frame, but not selecting the ones right along the edges, and creating a selection layer in the TOC. Use that layer instead of the source anno, and your export will be clean. Not ideal, by any means, but a workaround. I am using gdb annotation with 10.0 SP2
Bill C.
Eugene Oregon