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I'm really confused by this. ArcMap will seeminly randomly decide to not allow snapping when editing. Sometimes its only for certain features, sometimes for only parts of the same feature (e.g. one end of a line but not the other, or not along a part of the line). Now its just flat out not letting me snap to anything (yes, snapping is turned on with all options on). Any hints on this one?

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I get this too. My workaround is to click on a different tool in the editing menu then click back to the tool I was using which seems to bring the snapping environment back to life. – Jakub Mar 23 '12 at 15:49
I've discovered that the feature will snap to other features at the X at the center of the feature. You can move that X by holding down the Shift key while you're using the Edit Tool, where it can snap to vertices or edges. – kenbuja Mar 23 '12 at 16:02
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Hehe, one of the many buggy things about ArcMap. Sometimes you just have to shut the whole thing down. Every now and then we are reminded that software is not perfect. – dchaboya Mar 23 '12 at 16:07
It seems to me that the lack of snapping can be associated with certain MXD files - I just rebooted and still couldn't snap, yet took the same features into a new MXD and the snapping worked. so there must be features in the original MXD that aren't compatible with snapping, or maybe it is just a bug. – Ian Apr 20 '12 at 5:20
@Ian ah yes, the solution for a myriad of problems with ArcMap - pull all your layers into a new mxd. – Arabella Jan 25 at 5:02

5 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I had the same issue, but a friend said that I should use classic snapping to help select the layers I wanted to snap to. The classic snapping was a simple work around to the issue.

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up vote 5 down vote

There are several steps I use.
1. is easiest but don't necessarily try it first. copy the layer you need to edit, snap to and use for reference (as few as possible) to another document (for editing).
2. make sure you are not in the layout view.
3. make sure you don't have a definition query.

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up vote 4 down vote

I discovered that snapping won't work if the layer you're editing is in the Map Document more than once.

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up vote 1 down vote

What Brad said (especially make sure you're in data view - focus your data frame or edit in data view rather than layout).

You can also tighten your snapping tolerance. Under the snapping drop down arrow, select "options". Change the number value shown in my printscreen below. Sometimes this works for me. I've seen instances where this seems to refresh my snapping capability. Usually, I just don't have my data frame focussed though.

enter image description here

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up vote 1 down vote

I had this "no snapping" problem, and the eternal blue circle pause when trying to edit. I had a huge file of contours on my map which were in a different projection than the map. I got the warning whenever I turned on editing, but I just ignored it. When I turned off the contours, suddenly snapping and editing worked fine!

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