Very congested labeling... Help!

[CynthiaDavis]

I am currently making a map set that has 5 lines of text for each label, with each page displaying anywhere from 3-50+ labels. As you can imagine, some of the pages look extremely congested. I have tried the standard label engine, maplex label engine, and moving annotations by hand, but nothing seems to be working. Ideally I'd like key numbering or leader lines to kick on and when things are congested but it wont turn on. Please help me with this... 

[RobertBorchert]

Annotation is going to be your best bet. The leader lines available have needed to be improved ever since they were first developed and are not terribly good to work with.

You could also make your map page area smaller.  go with a larger scale. your trying to show to much data on a page.