exercise 7: labeling

Exercise 7: Labeling Just as you discovered with colors and symbols, lettering styles, known as fonts, can also portray a good deal of information. Based on the font style, you can portray a feeling of professionalism, of excitement, boredom, or of immaturity.

You can broaden your range of lettering by using the same font and making the text bold, italic, all caps, underlined, shadowed and so forth. As a rule of thumb, you should not use more than two font types. However, you can change the style to add variety.

In this exercise you will: explore labeling options and settings

The ScenarioYou are presenting a poster of your county for a map competition at the state fair. Your goal is to present a map that shows many aspects of your county.

Exercise 7: Labeling and map layout

Exploring the Fundamentals of GIS by Scott Crosier

The quickest and easiest way to label the features in a layer is to use the label features option in the content menu for the layer.

1. Right click the layer name in the Table of contents.

2. Select Label Features.

The features in the map will be labeled based on the Primary display field value, using Arial 8 pt. font.

To remove the labels, simply deselect the check box on the content menu.

Labeling from the content menu

Changing the labels• You may wish to modify the labels. You can access all of the settings on the layer Properties dialog box on the Labels tab. Details about this dialog are pro-vided in the following tasks.

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Adding a single field label

More advanced labeling tasks are feasible via the Layer Properties dialog box.

1. Open the Layer Properties Dialog box for the layer you wish to label.

2. Click the Labels tab.

3. Click the Label Features check box in the upper left corner.

This check box reflects the same Label Features option provided in the content sensitive menu, as highlighted in the previous task.

4. Under method, leave the default value as Label all features the same way.

5. In the Text String Label Field drop down menu, select the attribute table field that you wish to use for your label values.

6. Click Apply to preview your settings or click OK to apply your settings and close the Layer Properties dialog box.

Want More?• Work with the label method options to define the classes of features you will label.

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Modifying label styles

1. Open the Layer Properties Dialog box for the layer you wish to label and click the labels tab.

2. Using the Text Symbol tools, modify the font style used to label the features.

3. Modify the text size used.

4. Make any other character adjustments such as italics, bold or underlined text.

Optionally, you can open the Symbol Selector dialog box by clicking the Symbol button. Through this dialog, you can make the same changes as well as more advanced text and labeling styles.

Optionally, you can click the Label Styles button to used a pre-defined label style.


Want More?• Explore the more advanced labeling tools found by opening the Editor dialog box by clicking the Properties button found on the Symbol Selector dialog box.

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Using label expressions

At times you may wish to label your features using a combination of more than one field or by combining common text and field values. This is done through the expressions option on the labels tab.

1. Open the Layer Properties Dialog box for the layer you wish to label and click the labels tab.

2. Click the Expression button in the Text String box.

This will open the Label Expression dialog box. The field names appear in the top portion of the dialog with the expression pane below.

The Help button below the expression window is very helpful in understanding and writing VB script to create your expression. Other hints are provided below.

3. Double click the field names to add the field value to your label expression.

4. Include a space, then an ampersand (&) and another space between each part of your expression.

5. Once complete with your expression, click the Verify button to verify the validity of your expression and to preview and example label.

6. Click OK to close the Label Expression dialog box.


Expression Hints• If you wish to include common text, begin with quotation marks, then your text, then closing quotation marks.• Any spaces between text or field values will need to be in-cluded between quotation marks.• You can start a new line by inserting the code vbNewLine.

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Adjusting label placement1. Open the Layer Properties dialog box for the layer you

wish to label and click the labels tab.

2. Click the Placement Properties button in the Other Options box.

This will open the Placement Properties dialog box. Options available on this dialog will vary depending on the feature type (points, lines or polygons.) Commonly across feature types will be the option to deal with duplicate labels, as well as the Conflict Detection tab.

ArcMap will try to provide as many of the labels as possible, however, by default, it will not draw labels over one another, rather it will not draw some of the labels. Conflict detection will allow you to modify the drawing importance.

When using points, you can modify the placement of the label in relation to the point. You can also modify the angle that the label is written.

When using lines, you can modify the orientation (angular relation) of the label with the line feature and the placement of the label in relation to the line feature.

When using polygons, you can change the angle settings of the label within the feature.

3. Modify the settings as you wish.

4. Click OK to close the Placement Properties dialog box.


The Placement Properties dialog box for points, lines and polygons



Setting the label scale range

You may wish to label your features, but when zoomed too far out, too many labels appear and the map looks over-complicated. Inversely, you may have some features labeled, but when you zoom into a specific region, you no longer need that layer labeled.

1. Open the Layer Properties dialog box for the layer you wish to label and click the labels tab.

2. Click the Scale Range button in the Other Options box.

This will open the Scale range dialog box.

3. Select the radio button next to the option to Do not show labels when zoomed...

This will activate the Out to and In to fields.

4. Specify the Zoomed in and/or zoomed out settings you wish to use.

You may wish to use the data frame scale found on the Standard toolbar as a reference.

5. Click OK to apply your scale range settings and close the Scale range dialog box.

6. Click OK to close the Layers Properties dialog box.

7. Using the Zoom In and Zoom Out tools on the Tools toolbar, zoom in and out to preview your settings.

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exercise 7: labeling

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