Leader lines not rendering properly when converted to PDF

[KelseyKaszas1]

This is very puzzling, I have an annotation feature class stored in a geodatabase that contains labels with leader lines.

The leader lines show up perfectly in the .mxd, it is only when I export to PDF that there is intermittent rendering of the leader lines. The puzzling part is that it works for some leader lines and not for others. The actually text of the annotation shows up in every single instance. A portion of the leader line stemming from the text shows up in every instance as well, it is only whether or not the leader line is completed that seems to be the symptom.

Please let me know if you need anymore info to help diagnose the problem.

Here is an example of the leader line on the left not being completed and the leader line on the right rendering correctly:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]28626[/ATTACH]

[JohnSobetzer]

Not an explanation but can you get it to work by playing around with one of the many options that are available, in particular things like line width or styles?

If you can move it down your TOC, apply something like 1% transparency, does the the rasterization get it to work without unacceptable pixelation?

[KelseyKaszas1]

I was able to get it to work by changing the angle of the label's lead line. The behavior is still very strange however because only some of the label's that I adjusted translated to proper rendering. There were some that I adjusted that still did not render.

I also tried adjusting the dpi of my export, that did not help.

I also tried copy and pasting an anno that rendered properly the first time around and replacing a bad one. However when I exported it, the replaced anno was still not rendering properly.

The rendering issue is also impacting two other layer files, both are polygon feature classes. For one of the polygon FC's (parcel boundaries), there are entire areas where the lines are not rendering. In the other FC (city boundaries), all of the lines are rending, but the styling is not rendering properly in one section, it is supposed to be a dotted red line with a white solid background but only the white background shows up.

I will now attempt to experiment with styling and transparency and report my findings.

[KelseyKaszas1]

Changing the transparency did not work. I tried changing the position in the TOC, when I moved the annotation layer beneath everything else, the lines rendered more poorly than before (leader lines that had rendered properly the first time around were no longer rendering properly). When I moved the anno layer to the top of the TOC, there was no marked improvement in the rendering, this is probably because the anno layer was already pretty close to the top to begin with.

[JohnSobetzer]

It is getting old but you might check this out: http://support.esri.com/cn/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/17783

Can you print to a pdf?  If you don't have Adobe Acrobat there are many good free pdf printers out there like Bullzip.

[JamesKellough]

johns and K_Kaszas168, any other suggestions? I too am having issues with portions of annotation leader lines randomly not printing to PDF but perfectly visible on screen in my MXD. I have tries every combination of export options in ArcMap and I have also tried printing to Adobe, Bluebeam Revu, PDF Creator and PDF Redirect print drivers and all have failed.

[RebeccaSpring]

Hi, I realize this has been a while, but I too am now having the same problem.  The leader lines are fine within the mxd, but will not export (to anything, not pdf, jpg, etc).  Did you ever get this resolved?  I'm at an absolute loss.  Thanks.

[KarenTinkum]

I am having the same problem as well. Everything looks good in the mxd, but the pdf version is missing random leaders. No setting adjustments have fixed it.

I send these pdf versions out to multiple users and it's quite embarassing to have them looking so unprofessional.

[JamesBond1]

You wouldn't happen to have the data frame rotated, such that North is no longer straight up, would you?  I have seen similar quirks to what you describe when the data frame rotation was set to anything other than 0.

Just a thought.  Thanks

James

[KarenTinkum]

No, it's set to 0. I had one print correctly once, now all attempts leave off half my leaders. The only change I made to the mxd was to add another layer with labels.