How to split/explode ArcGIS annotation of multiple words into single word annotation?

Question

We have transfer the labels of a certain layer to annotation, and it seems that the single feature of the annotation is polygon, for example there is a label for a road named "Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest" which is labeled along with the road, while I wonder if we can split this annotation feature to three features like "Pennsylvania","Avenue" and "Northwest" each with its geographic position and label angle.

Is this possible?

update:

I am sorry but I missed that we have millions of features, so it would be better to implement it by program. :)

Answer 1

I am not aware of a tool to "explode" multi-word annotation in the same way that you can explode multipart features into singleparts but I think it would make a useful ArcGIS Idea.

However, a workaround I just tested and found to work is:

1. Start editing your annotation
2. Select a three-word annotation
3. Copy it twice
4. Edit the attributes of each of the three copies to remove all but one word

You can now move them independently, set their angles independently, alter their text symbols independently, etc

If you have millions of these to do then a workaround for that would be to:

1. Add additional fields for the maximum number of words you expect to encounter e.g. Word1, Word2 & Word3
2. Use the Field Calculator and its Python Parser to write the first word of your original field into Word1, the second word of your original field into Word2 and the third word of your original field into Word3. To preserve the geographic position and angle you will need to pad them out to the original length using spaces before and/or after the word.
3. Label your features using Word1 and then Convert Labels To Annotation, then repeat for Word2, and then repeat for Word3. I would write the annotation for each word to the same annotation feature class.