labelingqgisqgis-plugins
I am labeling a lot of features and the Easy Custom Labeling tool is helping me to move every label to the desired position. I also like that the tool adds arrows for labels that I moved but sometimes I am just moving them some few pixels and do not want an arrow to be created.
I am now wondering how I can get rid of a selection of arrows.
For now, I can only think of creating two layers: one for labels without arrows and one for the ones with arrows.
On the 'Advanced' tab of the 'Layer Labeling settings' menu there is the 'Engine setting' button. If you open that dialogue, you will see the option to show all labels, including colliding labels. That should give you more control and a more consistent behavior.
Something I used to do previously when I had similar problems with label placements is to create centroids of the polygons (vector - geometry tools), label those using the option to label over point and then move the points around to ensure perfect placement of your labels.
You can show all labels, regardless whether they intersect, by checking the box "Show all labels" in the Engine settings of the desired label's Layer labeling settings. The Engine settings can be found on the end of the extended options tab.
If the missing label is still not displayed, I would try to edit the Label layer manually by overwriting the field in the attribute table with some other string.
Best Answer
To exclude some of the arrows of labels that have been moved with the tool you can manipulate label's layer. I first selected all the labels with arrows that should not have arrows and then used the Field Calculator to add a new column in the attribute table. In this column I put a "1" for the selected labels. For the labels that were not moved or should keep the arrow I left the column empty.
After that it is just a matter of styling the layer:
Go to Properties -> Styles and choose "Categorized Styles" to define different stylings according to the value in the new column. For the arrows you want to disappear choose "No pen" as Pen Style in the Symbol Selector.
Below you can see an example. The labels for the United Kingdom and Ireland were moved and their value in the new "Arrow"-column was set to one. (Basemap data credit: Natural Earth)