ArcGIS 10 SP1 Custom Overlay Grid: need to add a labeling expression

Question

I have a custom overlay grid whose labels are driven by an ugly attribute field which contains unnecessary leading zeroes and other labeling no-nos. How can I introduce a labeling expression to this grid? Thank you!

Answer 1

Label expressions for a feature layer may be set by going to the the layers Properties>Labels tab, and click on the Expression button. However, Jakub has a good point that you should clean up your data first via field calculator. Here is the ArcGIS 10 link for feature expressions.

Answer 2

You can use many expressions in the label expression dialog.
You might try using regex to get at some of the hard to reach problems.
Here is one of my old questions that can show how it can be used.

If it is just trailing or leading zeros you can use...
Right ([mycolumn],4)

that will drop everything in the front leaving only 4 characters from the right side.

Function FindLabel( [NAME]  )
  Dim fldValue, aWords, i, word, aNewWords, NewWord, numElements, k

  fldValue = [NAME]  

  'k = 0 'One word first line and two words all other lines  
 k = 1 'Two words first line and all other lines

  if not IsNull(fldValue) then
    aWords = split(fldValue, " ")
    numElements = UBound(aWords)

    'Create new array to store new field value and redimmension to store
    ' the correct number of elements to match original number of elements
    aNewWords = Array()
    Redim aNewWords(numElements)

    for i = LBound(aWords) to UBound(aWords)
       if i  Mod 2 = k  then
          word = aWords(i) & vbCr
       else
          word = aWords(i)
       end if
       aNewWords(i) = word
    next    

    NewWord = Join(aNewWords, " ")

  else
    NewWord = fldValue
  end if
  FindLabel = NewWord
End Function

This is an example of a label expression from streetmap.

Answer 3

Per Esri, it is not possible at this time to incorporate a label expression with a custom overlay grid; Label expressions are not supported with grid labels.