gEDA-user: PCB Element IDs

[DJ Delorie]

The text you refer to is called a "refdes" in PCB, not an element ID.
Elements have internal IDs, so use "refdes" to avoid confusion.

You might want to try a more recent PCB; this was a common problem a
while back.

In recent PCBs, there are settings to force the crosshair to ignore
all text, or ignore everything except text.  These are useful for
managing refdes's (in my case, I always have one of those flags set).