This tutorial teaches how to convert labels to annotation in ArcGIS and edit the annotation. Roads are labeled from their name attribute. The labels are converted to an annotation feature class, allowing more control over annotation placement and scaling. The Annotation toolbar is used to move, resize, rotate and delete existing annotation, and add new annotation using construction tools. Attributes can update the annotation text. Converting labels to annotation provides more flexibility than labels alone.

1. GIS Tutorials
For Mississippi’s GIS User Community
GIS tutorials are provided as guides on how to perform standard and commonly-used GIS functions
utilizing ESRI ArcGIS© version 9.2 software. Tutorials and data may be downloaded at
http://www.gri.msstate.edu/edu_out/gis_tutorials.php.
Creating Annotation
from Labels
Gunnar Olson
March 5, 2008
For questions regarding GRI’s Geospatial Extension Programs
contact Dr. Scott Samson at scotts@gri.msstate.edu. For questions regarding
GIS Tutorials contact Gunnar Olson at gunnar@gri.msstate.edu.

2. Introduction
This tutorial explores label functionality, how to convert labels to an annotation feature class,
and how to use the annotation toolbar to manipulate annotation to suit your requirements (i.e.
position, size, and scale). All data required for this tutorial is contained in annotation.zip. In this
tutorial you will create a map displaying road centerlines overlaid on some high resolution aerial
imagery. You will first use the label features function to add the road names to the map as
descriptive text, exploring label options as you proceed. When labeling the roads, you will see
that the options available for size, position, and scale are limited. After labeling the roads you
will convert the labels to an annotation feature class. Annotation offers more options and
flexibility when placing descriptive text on your map. The principles and methods described in
this tutorial can easily be applied to other map layers to create the desired annotation.
Download and Unzip Tutorial Data
The tutorial data is contained in annotation.zip, which can be downloaded from
http://www.gri.msstate.edu/edu_out/gis_tutorials.php.
Download annotation.zip if you have not already done so.
Unzip annotation.zip and save annotation.mdb to a directory of your choice.
The zipped file contains a geodatabase, annotation.mdb, which contains the following:
• roads – Line feature class
• orthophoto – 2-foot resolution digital color geotiff image
Open a New ArcMap Project, Add Data, and Set Symbology
Open ArcMap with a new empty map.
Click the Add Data button on the Standard toolbar, navigate to annotation.mdb, and add both
the roads feature class and orthophoto.
Right-click on the roads line feature symbol in the ArcMap Table of Contents and set the
color to black.
Double-click on the orthophoto layer in the Table of Contents to open the Layer Properties
window.
Select the Display tab and set Transparency to 30%.
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3. Click OK to apply the settings and close the Layer Properties window.
Set the map scale to 1:4800 on the Standard toolbar and center the data in the map display if
necessary.
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4. Label Roads Features
You will now label the road features with the road names stored in the feature class attribute
table.
Double click on the roads layer in the ArcMap Table of Contents to open the Layer
Properties window.
Select the Labels tab.
Check the box next to Label features in this layer.
For Text String, set Label Field to NAME from the dropdown menu.
Click on the Placement Properties button to open the Placement Properties window.
Ensure that the Placement tab is selected.
Set the Orientation to Parallel.
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5. Set Position to Above.
Set the Location along the line to At Best.
For Duplicate Labels, select Place one label per feature part.
Tip: For additional information on the options available in the Placement Properties
window, click on the Help button (the question mark at the top of the Placement Properties
window) and click on any of the options. A text box will appear, providing descriptive
information about the selected option.
Click OK to close the Placement Properties window.
Click the Apply button in the Layer Properties window to apply the new settings.
Observe the labels now displayed in the map. The labels should display similar to those shown
on the next page. In this example, notice that there is a label for every road segment (Gillespie
Street and Wood Street, running East-West, illustrate this concept very well). This results in
unwanted label redundancy, so you will now explore the other available Duplicate Label options.
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6. In the Layer Properties window, click on the Placement Properties button to open the
Placement Properties window.
For Duplicate Labels, switch the selection to Place one label per feature.
Click OK to close the Placement Properties window.
Click the Apply button in the layer Properties window to apply the new settings.
Observe the labels now displayed in the map. The labels look exactly the same as they did
before. Again, this is not the desired option.
In the Layer Properties window, click on the Placement Properties button to open the
Placement Properties window.
In the Placement Properties window, click on the Help button (?) and click on Place one
label per feature part to display a description of the option.
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7. Use the Help button to view the description of the other Duplicate Labels options.
For Duplicate Labels, switch the selection to Remove Duplicate Labels.
Click OK to close the Placement Properties window.
Click OK button in the layer Properties window to apply the new settings and close the
window.
Observe the labels displayed in the map. As illustrated in the figure below, the labels are not
nearly as cluttered now with the duplicate labels removed. However, some of the labels are not
ideally positioned. Additionally, as you will observe in a moment, the labels are not scaled to the
map data (i.e. the labels will stay the same font size when you zoom in and out on the map).
Converting the labels to annotation will help address these issues.
Zoom in and out in the map display and observe that the labels maintain their font size
independent of the scale the data is displayed at.
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8. For this map, as specified earlier, you will display the data at a scale of 1:4800.
Ensure that the map scale is still set to 1:4800 on the Standard Toolbar.
Double click on the roads layer in the Table of Contents to open the Layer Properties
window.
In the Layer Properties window, ensure that the Labels tab is selected.
The font size for the label text is set to 8, which looks pretty well proportioned to the data, so
leave the font size set as is. The labels don’t show up against the background imagery very well,
so you will add a white halo to the labels before converting them to annotation.
Ensure that the Label Field for Text String is set to NAME.
For Text Symbol, click the Symbol button to open the Symbol Selector window.
In the Symbol Selector window, click the Properties button to open the Editor window.
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9. In the Editor window, select the Mask tab.
For Style, select Halo and leave the size set to 2.
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10. Click OK to close the Editor window.
Click OK to close the Symbol Selector window.
Click OK to close the Layer Properties window.
The labels in the map display should now appear with a halo, as shown below. You can see that
there are still some redundant labels that you will probably want to remove. At this point,
however, the label properties don’t allow additional options for removing just some of the labels.
You can address this issue by converting the labels to an annotation feature class and then editing
the annotation using tools on the Annotation toolbar.
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11. Convert Labels to Annotation
Once the label properties have been established, the labels can be converted to an annotation
feature class. This will allow you to exercise more control over the annotation.
Ensure that the map display scale is set to 1:4800 on the Standard toolbar.
Right click on the roads layer in the Table of Contents and select Convert Labels to
Annotation to open the Convert Labels to Annotation window.
Uncheck the Feature Linked box.
For Annotation Feature Class, click on the navigation folder to open the Create Annotation
Feature Class window.
Navigate to annotation.mdb and name the annotation feature class roads_anno_4800.
Click Save.
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12. The Convert Labels to Annotation window should now appear as shown below. Notice that the
Reference Scale for the annotation to be created is set to 1:4800. This is based on the scale you
specified in the map display.
Click Convert to create the new annotation feature class.
You will see the new annotation feature class added to ArcMap and displayed in the Table of
Contents. When the new annotation feature class is added to the map, the labels for the roads are
automatically turned off.
Turn the annotation layer on and off to verify that the roads labels have been turned off.
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13. Editing Existing Annotation
At this point you have annotation in your map that needs to be moved, added, or deleted from the
annotation feature class. You will now start an edit session and turn on the Annotation toolbar so
you can modify the annotation.
Click View > Toolbars > Editor to turn on the Editor toolbar if not already on.
On the Editor toolbar, click the Editor button and select Start Editing.
Set the Target to roads_anno_4800.
Click View > Toolbars > Annotation to turn on the Annotation toolbar if not already on.
Note: You must be in an edit session or the tools on the Annotation toolbar will be inactive and grayed
out.
Click on the Edit Annotation Tool on the Annotation toolbar and click on some
annotation in the map display to select it.
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14. There are several things you can do with existing annotation:
• Move - You can move the selected annotation by clicking and dragging it.
• Resize - You can resize the annotation by clicking and dragging the red rectangle at the top
of the selected annotation.
• Delete - You can delete annotation by selecting it and pressing the delete key.
• Rotate – You can rotate the annotation by selecting it and then selecting the Rotate tool
from the Editor toolbar.
To reiterate, the Edit Annotation Tool is used to perform the above editing tasks on
EXISTING annotation.
Now, use the methods just discussed to edit existing annotation in the map by repositioning,
resizing, rotating, and deleting annotation as desired.
Adding New Annotation
You may encounter situations where you would like to add some additional annotation to your
map. The Construct Annotation tools on the Annotation toolbar can be used to add additional
annotation.
Construct Annotation With a Leader Line
Construct Straight Annotation
Construct Horizontal Annotation
As you select each tool, you will see that the Construction type on the Annotation toolbar
changes to correspond with the selected tool. Additional Construction options available from the
dropdown menu include the Curved and Follow Feature options.
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15. You will now delete some annotation in your map and use the Construct Annotation tools to
recreate the deleted annotation.
Select some annotation text in your map with the Edit Annotation Tool .
Right click and select Delete to delete the selected annotation.
Select the Construct Horizontal Annotation tool from the Annotation toolbar and
hover the cursor over the location where you just deleted the annotation.
You can see that the word Text appears above the cursor. This text value is specified by the Text
box on the Annotation toolbar, as shown here.
On the Annotation toolbar, for Text, type in the name of the street that you just deleted the
annotation for.
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16. Drag the cursor back to the location where you want to place the annotation. Don’t click yet
to place the new annotation!!
You should see that the text above the cursor has been updated with the text you just typed in the
Text box.
What if you didn’t remember the name of the street!? Rather than typing in the street name in the
Text box, you can update the annotation based on an attribute.
On the Annotation toolbar, delete the text in the Text box so that it is empty.
The text above the cursor should change back to Text.
Reselect the Construct Horizontal Annotation tool .
Drag the cursor back to the location where you want to place the annotation and ensure that
the cursor is centered on the road.
Press Ctrl + W to update the annotation text. You will see that the annotation text has been
updated with the road name. This attribute value is updated based on the Label field specified
for the roads layer.
Click to place the updated annotation text on the map.
You will see that the new annotation is added to the map.
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17. In this exercise you have learned how to:
• Label Features
• Convert Labels to Annotation
• Edit Existing Annotation
• Add New Annotation
As you have seen in this exercise, the options available for working with annotation make it
much more convenient and flexible than labels to work with. Although the data you work with in
your own mapping applications will be different, the same fundamentals for working with labels
and annotation apply to all data.
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