Convert labels to annotations is messing up the label format

Question

Has anyone else experienced this before? For a few of the projects I've been working on (but not all, so this doesn't happen all the time) I have features that I want to label with these fairly large label blocks which usually have between 3-8 lines in a label. When the Maplex engine creates the labels, they appear as they should with all of the lines evenly spaced. Then, every time I convert this layer's labels into annos, they turn out as below, with every other line being squished together. I've tried:

• moving the layer to a new mxd and converting to anno
• taking a fresh, blank template version of the feature class, copying the features over, then converting
• editing the text in the anno after conversion (turns out I'm unable to add in a blank line in the middle of the block by pressing enter twice and hitting apply)

And I keep getting the same result. Also, when I convert similar labels with multiple lines in this mxd, they turn out fine, no line squishing. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening or at least have suggestions on how to work around it?

Here is the label expression used:

"PLACE " & [Furniture_MultiPort.Furniture_Type] & vbnewline & [Furniture_MultiPort.PED_ID] & VBNEWLINE & [Furniture_MultiPort.Cable_Type] & " " & [Furniture_MultiPort.Multiport_Size] & "-" &  [Furniture_MultiPort.ORDER_LENGTH] & "-" & [Furniture_MultiPort.Multiport_Size] & vbnewline & "(COIL 2X10): FC4181A, " &  [Furniture_MultiPort.FIBRE_MIN] & "-" & [Furniture_MultiPort.FIBRE_MAX] & VBNEWLINE & "WL: " & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR1] & "   " & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR2] & VBNEWLINE & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR3]  & "   " & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR4] & VBNEWLINE & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR5]  & "   " & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR6] & VBNEWLINE & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR7]  & "   " & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR8] & VBNEWLINE & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR9]  & "   " & [tbl_MP_ADR.ADR10] 

Pic 1.

How the label is supposed to look when the label engine creates it. Multiple lines, evenly spaced

This is how the annotations appear after conversion.

Answer 1

It looks like you have a long multiline field from the screenshot, which may be confusing people. I now see the other fields.

Not every Maplex option comes through to annotation. You may be able to fix this formatting by globally changing (field calculating) the FontLeading field to a lower number and the HorizontalAlignment field to 2 (this is the domain value for Right alignment). If you are somehow getting extra blank lines, not just too much leading, that is a little trickier to work with. Try using the Annotation editing tool to edit text. This tool can also break up parts and stack them back together. This tool, however, would have to fix each record one at a time.