Pausing the map's drawing

If you want to make changes to your map without having the map refresh each time, you can use the Pause Drawing button. When you pause drawing, you temporarily suspend all drawing in ArcMap in both data view and layout view.

The Pause Drawing tool is most useful when you are changing the symbology and properties of several layers or adding or removing many layers and don't want the map to redraw each time you click OK on a dialog box.

While drawing is paused, your data frame will look like this:

Note:

Each time your map refreshes, the placement of your labels is recalculated. Depending on the label engine used and the label parameters that are set this will take varying amounts of time. Clicking the Pause Labeling button on the Labeling toolbar lets you suspend the drawing of labels while you continue to work with your data. This is useful when you are working with a heavily labeled map but do not need the features labeled for the task you are completing.

1. Click the Pause Drawing button whenever you want to suspend drawing. The Pause Drawing button is located in the lower left of the view window, next to the Refresh button and the horizontal scroll bar.

You can also press F9 as a shortcut to pause drawing.

2. Click the button again to resume drawing.