Troubleshooting Road Name Labeling

[NathanGIS]

Hi, I was hoping someone could help me out. When making maps, I have such a tough time with labeling. Especially when roads are denser, or road names are longer, or even when roads are short. I have played around with the maplex labeling and also went into properties, but still have issues. I truly wish you could drag and drop and road name and simply place it. One issue I am having right now is for short roads, the name doesnt even show up. I suspect this is because of the scale. Maybe I am too zoomed out? Even so, I want the name to show up at any scale. I have set the minimum feature size for labeling to zero and nothing happens. 

Are there any tutorials out there for learning how to label better? It seems like the labeling is just really tedious on arcgis and I am wondering if there is an easy solution to make maps look less dense?

Than you for your time and insight. 

[SteveCole]

Unfortunately, there's no silver bullet- you have to put in the time in order to get good results. Try reviewing this technical workshop slide deck from a previous UC about using Maplex. It's from 2017 but it's still valid for the most part.

[Sean_Wray]

If you want to place labels manually you can convert labels to annotations and then place them where ever you want. Just know that annotations can be very limiting and even more time consuming. In the labeling dialog the is a "never remove" option. Sometime that will produce unwanted results though, but give it a shot.

I agree with the above. There is no silver bullet for labels. In my opinion, it's one of the most time consuming operations of making a good map.