Convert font text to polygon feature

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone know a way that I could convert actual text to a polygon feature?

I want to be able to type some text using a particular font onto a map or layout, then actually convert that text graphic into a polygon feature spatially placed.

cheers,

-Paul

[Scott_Harris · Accepted solution]

If you have an advanced license, you use the Feature Outline Masks tool on annotation feature classes.

Feature Outline Masks—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop 

If you describe your goal a bit more, perhaps there's a better option?

[Anonymous User]

Hi Scott

Yes, that worked perfectly, thanks!

For anyone that's interested, the use case is around labelling in runtime mobile apps. The actual labelling API is limited at present, geodatabase annotation is not supported, and we want to avoid pre-rendering tpks as basemaps which can become too large. This workaround allows us some flexibility to add text labels to a mobile map package that look crisp and sharp, and, from my limited testing so far, take up much less storage space as vector data rather than tiles of the entire extent of the map.

Open to hearing other ideas if anyone has them, but this workaround seems fine for now and answers the question.

cheers,

-Paul