Select/Delete Polygons that are surrounded by other Polygons

[JessicaGormont]

We are trying to convert our Address Annotation Feature Class into a Shapefile. I was able to use the "Feature to Polygon" tool in order to do this conversion, but it filled in all the holes in the numbers with additional polygons (please see attached photo for example). I need to select and delete all these additional polygons as efficiently as possible; since there are over 100k features, it would take WAY too long to do it by hand.

Is there a way to select all the polygons that are completely surrounded by other polygons within the same shapefile?

Additional notes: There are all sorts of font sizes in the Anno, so I can't just select the additional polygons by area. Also, I am not a programmer, so if you give me code, please also tell me how to use it. Thanks!!!

[JessicaGormont]

Thanks for all the suggestions! Darren's solution worked very well. I just need to go in and hand-clean a few oddballs where the font was so small, the output polys were pixelated enough that the inside poly ended up touching the universal boundary.

Thanks again!
~Jessica

[BruceHarold]

Hi

If you have attribution common to the doughnuts and surrounding features the attached may be useful.

regards

[DuncanHornby]

Nice one Darren! 🙂