Just using Maplex to label your map will result in more labels and more of those labels correctly located. We've been saying that for a while now. The simpler your map is (fewer features and fewer clusters of features) the more likely it is that Maplex will be able to place all the labels correctly. Another dimension of getting correctly placed labels is knowledge of what is possible with respect to how Maplex works and how to best leverage its features. However, it does not matter whether your map is complex or you don't know as much as you would like to about Maplex--producing and editing annotation is the answer if you want your map to look its best.

Example of a map with many unplaced labelsAfter producing more than a few maps that required annotation and making the edits, we've learned that taking Maplex and the Labeling toolbar at face value and doing all that you can do isn't necessarily the best strategy.  By that, I mean, setting up your label rules as best you know how, meticulously determining feature weights, and painstakingly arranging the label classes in the priority list will be something of a waste of effort if the result requires that you produce annotation so you can make the final edits by hand.

The reason is:  not all annotation editing tasks are created equally. Some annotation editing tasks are very easy, like moving a horizontal piece of text. Thus, a successful strategy for using Maplex is one that creates annotation that is easiest to edit, rather than a map that looks closest to the desired final result.  For example, if your best effort produces a decent looking map, but you see that some labels are definitely missing (showing unplaced labels or annotation proves this, as exhibited in the picture to the right), the annotation editing job goes something like this:

  1. Find each unplaced annotation feature.
  2. Change it's status attribute from unplaced to placed.  Note that the location of this label will be the default placement--no frills or special Maplex intelligence gets applied here.
  3. Now, integrate the new label into the existing fabric of your map.  This may be easily done in half a minute, or, as I have noted in too many cases, I needed to move six to ten other annotation elements to make room. If that happened to be in a cluster of labels and features, the level of refinement needed requires me to zoom in and exactly place some labels.  Sometimes a cascade effect resulted, requiring many other annotation elements on the periphery of the problem area to be adjusted outward to make room to solve the original problem.  All of that resulting in 10-30 minutes of intense brain- and motivation-draining work.

In learning to avoid such situations involved using Maplex a bit differently.  Here's what we recommend:

  • Don't bother with feature weights for line or area features.  This is the biggest producer of unplaced labels. 
  • It is much easier to delete an annotation feature than to create one.  So spend the time to set up your Repeat Labels options for line and large polygon features.  Then make sure your Remove Duplicates settings won't undo your work because they are too aggressive.
  • Use feature linked annotation for line features.  You can always remove the feature-linked relationship after editing if you want to distribute the annotation separately.  This way you can take advantage of the follow feature option in the annotation editor.
  • Set up your label priority rankings and check them before converting labels to annotation; but don't spend too much time working with the rankings while you're refining your Maplex placement settings.
  • It's far better to add extra label classes to get larger or smaller labels for larger and smaller features than to spend the time resizing annotation features.
  • Design your text symbols to be flexible.  Some maps have larger labels for background features--sometimes you can make these even larger, use a lighter text color, and then use Maplex's background label option.  This will allow other more critical labels to be placed and placed better.
  • Last, check out the Abbreviate Label options.  Provided that your label attribute values are correctly spelled and consistently not abbreviated, you will get more correctly placed labels.
To restate, the object here is to produce the shortest annotation editing phase in your map production workflow. The above guidance for getting more labels on the map that require no editing or only faster editing tasks is how this objective is achieved.