Annotations Select - Select annotations via a text attribute table

With this function an attribute table for the chosen annotation themes and graphic labels can be created. In this table annotations can be selected by their attributes (font, size, color etc.) as in any other ArcView table via the Query Builder. This is very useful in context with the function Annotations Modify if you want to change specific labels (e.g. format all blue labels red, all green labels to font size 14 or all small labels into capital letters). The function is also important if you want to export a large number of graphic labels into different annotation themes (separated by their appearance or meaning).

• Annotation Features: Choose the annotation themes in which you want to search or select annotations (themes in which annotations are selected are marked with a * behind the name). With the button you can select the active, with the visible and with all annotation themes of the view. Press the Shift key while clicking on a button to add these themes to the current selection and the Ctrl key to deselect them.
• Graphic Labels: Select the themes whose attached graphics you want to search or select. Select the option <Detached Graphics> to search unattached graphics. The buttons , and work according to Annotation Features.
• Labels: Selected uses only the selected, All uses all labels. The number of the selected and of all labels is displayed behind these two options. If no labels are chosen, you can't run the function (the button isn't active). If you don't want to make a new selection but just want to limit the current selection chose Selected in order to increase the speed for building the attribute table (All is always activated by default).
• Limit to Visible Extent: Limits the attribute table to those labels that fall inside the visible extent of the view (the number of matching labels will be displayed at Labels). Use this option if you want to analyze only the labels inside a specific extent (zoom the view accordingly before) - thereby you can speed up this function considerably.
• Open Query Builder: Opens the ArcView Query Builder automatically after the creation of the attribute table. There you can define any query based on the chosen text attributes (see ArcView Help for the usage of the Query Builder). Of course you can open the Query Builder as usual with the corresponding button, the function Table - Query or the hot key Ctrl+Q.
• Reference Scale: The calculation of the font Size depends on the scale (e.g.: at the scale 1:10.000 the font size is 12.5 points - at 1:1.000 it is 125 points). If the checkbox is activated you can define this scale (the value entered last will be kept until you finish your ArcView session - see Annotations Modify too). Deactivate the checkbox to calculate the font size at the current scale of the view. If the Map Units of the view aren't defined though, the scale and the font size can't be calculated properly.
• Attributes: Select the fields that should be created in the attribute table. Choose only those attributes you really need to select labels, because this speeds up calculation time considerably (in most cases the fields Size and ColTxt are sufficient).
• Text: label text with a maximum width of 40 characters (field width will be optimized);
• Angle: rotation angle in degrees (number between 0 and 360°) - always 0 for Spline Text;
• Size: font size (number with to decimal digits depending on the Reference Scale);
• Font: font name with a maximum width of 40 characters (field width will be optimized);
• Style: font style with the string values Normal (instead of Standard and Roman), Italic (instead of Cursive), Bold (instead of Book), Demi (instead of Medium) and Light (instead of Thin).
• ColRGB: The 3 numeric fields ColR, ColG and ColB with the red, yellow and blue component of the text color will be created (values between 0 and 255).
• ColHSV: The 3 numeric fields ColH, ColS und ColV with the values of the HSV-color model will be created (Hue, Saturation and Value between 0 and 255, gray gets the hue -1).
• ColTxt: alphanumeric field with the textual description of Value, Saturation and Hue (for instance "medium deep red"). The Value is described as black, very dark, dark, medium, light, very light and brilliant, the Saturation as gray, very pale, pale, moderate, intense and deep, the Hue as Red, Orange-Red, Orange, Yellow, Yellow-Green, Green, Blue-Green, Cyan, Cyan-Blue, Sky-Blue, Blue, Violet-Blue, Violet, Magenta and Purple-Red. A dark orange is described as Brown and a dark yellow as Olive.
• OriginXY: The 2 numeric fields OriginX and OriginY with the coordinates of the label's origin in map units (e.g. meter) will be created.
• Width and Height: absolute width and height of the label's bounding box in map units (e.g. meter).
• Save Table File: If you activate this checkbox, the attribute table will not be deleted after you made your selection but will be preserved for documentation or further evaluation (otherwise the table will be created in the temporary directory $HOME and deleted afterwards). You can define path and name of the created dBASE file. Click on the corresponding button to open the usual ArcView dialog for defining an output file.

You can't re-use a stored attribute table for selection, because the synchronization between the records of the table and the annotations or graphic labels can't be maintained (this relation is lost as soon as a single label would be removed or added).

After clicking on the button the attribute table will be created and opened (this may take a long time if you have many labels - especially for ARC/INFO Annotations). For each annotation or each graphic label a single record will be created in the table.

• If the option Open Query Builder was active, the usual ArcView dialog for selecting records will be opened automatically. There you can define any query based on the chosen text attributes (see ArcView Help for the usage of the Query Builder).
• Of course you can perform all kind of operations as in all other tables in ArcView: select records using the mouse, sort the table by field values, promote the selected records to the top of the table, change width and order of the columns etc.
• Update selection of text labels?: This dialog appears if you try to finish the selection (i.e. you want to close the Query Builder or the table). Click to synchronize the selected records of the attribute table with the labels, this means the corresponding graphic labels or annotation features are selected (the number of selected records and originally selected labels is shown). Click to finish the selection and to close the attribute table without changing the original selection of the labels. Click to return to the attribute table or the Query Builder and continue the selection.