Labels overlapping annotations ArcMap 10.6

[MeikeWalter]

Hi all,

I came across this issue regarding labels overlapping annotations in ArcMap 10.6 (picture left) where they don't overlap in 10.5 (picture right)... What am I missing? I simply opened the mxd so the settings are all the same (I would have guessed, but obviously I'm wrong):

   

How can I prevent the labels from overlapping annotations in 10.6?

Thanks for any help!

[LindsayWithers1]

We also ran into this same problem with 10.6. Previously (pre-10.6) we would sometimes see this if the "Default" annotation group was turned off, but now we see it happen even when the "Default" annotation group is still turned on. We noticed that some label settings within existing maps/mxds changed automatically when we switched to 10.6 (such as: Remove duplicates changed from 0 map units, to 5 inches), but even when re-adjusting that setting we still see labels overlap sometimes.

[WendyHarrison]

Hi all,

How are your weights set for the annotation in these maps?  you can open the weights dialog box from the Labeling tool bar 

and then change the Show drop-down to show annotation and graphics

Your annotation whether it is map annotation or geodatabase annotation should have a weight of high in order for labels to not overlap it.

thanks

Wendy

[LindsayWithers1]

Thanks Wendy! Our annotation setting has been at High by default but that hasn't solved the problem we're seeing. Another odd thing that started happening at 10.6 (for existing maps where everything had been working fine in 10.5), is that if we set a polygon layer's label weight to 1,000 (for both boundary and interior, with all other layers at 0 weight) so that no labels draw over that polygon, some labels still draw over that polygon. So we've had to use SQL queries a lot more to not have those labels not draw over certain polygons since opening up our maps in 10.6. Is 1,000 still the correct number to use to stop any auto-labeling to occur over a feature?

[WendyHarrison]

Hi Lindsay,

1000 is still the correct number to use to block overlap.  Do any of your label classes use the never remove option?  curious if that's somehow forcing the label over top.

thanks

Wendy

[LindsayWithers1]

Thanks Wendy! And nope, the label classes have "Never remove" unchecked. Attached are a couple screenshots showing the difference between the same map (created in older version of ArcMap) after being re-opened in 10.6. We were using a polygon layer (with 1,000 weights) to stop labels from drawing outside of a study area.

[MeikeWalter]

Hi everybody,

unfortunately, there will be no solution to this (at least in ArcMap).

Since we couldn't fix this we contacted Esri Customer Care and they did reproduce it with their own data and opened a bug-ticket Esri BUG-000120467 - "An annotation feature class is overlapped by dynamic labels when duplicate labels are removed in ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro".

And this is the response we got:

It ist fixed only in ArcGIS Pro 2.4 and will not be fixed in ArcMap!

Not very helpful for us...

[WendyHarrison]

Hi Meike,

We do port Maplex fixes back to ArcMap when needed.  I am not able to reproduce this issue with your data at 10.8

Lindsay can you see if this is the same issue you're having?  do you have remove duplicates turned on?

thanks

Wendy

[LindsayWithers1]

Hi Wendy, we do have Removed Duplicates turned on - we had actually noticed earlier this year that turning it off seemed to help the overlap issue, but we constantly rely on that setting being turned on to make our labels look good, so we've had to live with the overlap issue. As I mentioned further above, the Remove Duplicates setting seemed to change from Map Units or Points to "Inches" after the switch to 10.6, if that's helpful.