Force legend items to populate vertically before creating a new column

Question

Hi, I'm seeking legend fitting strategies for horizontal/landscape orientations:

I would like my legend items to fill my legend's columns entirely from top to bottom before moving to a new column, using the entire vertical space allocated. Below you can see the space I've allowed for the legend, yet the legend has added an additional column that is not required if it were to fill columns 1 and 2 entirely. This is set to Adjust Columns, no layers are set to Keep in single column:

I don't see any fitting strategies that force the items to go all the way to the bottom and then only add new columns as required.

I use map series with horizontally oriented dynamic legends with varying numbers of layers visible from map to map. Page 1 might need only the first column and page 2 needs 5 columns. I'm looking for a solution that will allow the legend to simply shrink and expand to fill the exact space that I have designated from top to bottom and then left to right without intervening on every page to refit legend items.

Pro seems to have an aversion to taking legend items all the way to the bottom in horizontally oriented legends in general, and I'd love some advice on how to handle this.

Running 3.4.1

LizAbbey · Answer

I have just posted the idea here. Give it a kudo if you'd like to see this functionality in legends.

LizAbbey · Answer

Thank you for your response, Aubri - much appreciated. I will shift this over into the Ideas area.

AubriOtis · Answer

Hi,

Right now legends don't have an option to "pour" all the items into one column before adding a second. The columns always try to balance. This is a great idea though! Recently table frames got a checkbox to either balance or fill columns. The same behavior could be applied to legends. I recommend adding this as an Idea so other people can vote on it.

In the meantime, the Manual Columns fitting strategy allows you to determine which items go in which columns. You can use that to get the look you want, but it does require that you manually assign the items to the appropriate column. Columns can be left blank if they aren't needed, so you can have a legend set to 4 columns with only 3 of the columns containing symbols. If additional symbols are added, that 4th column can be filled.