I've been playing around with annotations, trying to wrap my head around them (up until now I've just done them manually by drawing graphics on the map document). What I usually do is label the features via the layer properties menu and then convert them to annotation. I also choose a text symbol that has a leader line so I can move them around at will in case of conflicts. What I have found is that if I save them "in the map", I can move them around freely and the leader line stays put on its respective feature. I can also edit the text string of the annotation itself.
When I save to a database, however, I cannot move them around freely, and I cannot edit the text strings. I assume this is because I'm not saving it as a feature-linked annotation feature class. From what I understand, saving it as feature-linked will make it so if I edit properties of the feature in an edit session and then save it, the annotation should update automatically to reflect my changes. However, the tickbox for "feature-linked" is always greyed out. How do I save a feature-linked annotation class then?