idea Save styles as unique values, not layer name in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Save styles as unique values, not layer name

vlatane_va_energy — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 16:13:40 GMT

In 3.2, ArcGIS Pro added the ability to save all style items for a project in a stylx file at once. Although this is a great start for exporting a bunch of style items, the end result is not useful for quickly matching layers back to a style.

If I have layer, MapUnitPolys, displayed using Unique Values based on the Symbol field,

I would like to save these unique values all at once to an new stylx file, with each style item named as its value in Symbol. Here's what I would like to produce:

Here is what the current Save As Style Items tool produces:

Why does this matter?

The whole point of the style file for my workflow is to allow the user to quickly match a layer to a style file and symbolize the layer appropriately using Match Layer Symbology To A Style. If they tried to use the current batch-produced style file, there is no key to match between the style file and the Symbol field. The proposed change would allow us to specify a field to use as a naming convention in style items, making it easy to batch produce a style file that is useful in Symbology without taking further steps. Simply put, the tool is not useful to me in its current iteration, as I have to go back through and manually relabel things to make it a helpful style file.

I can think of one obstacle which would make this harder to implement: Save As Style Items exports everything in the project, whereas this setting would be most useful on a layer-by-layer basis. Perhaps an additional layer setting would be more appropriate for this idea?

Relevant previous thread here: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/save-as-style-items-save-unique-values-as-the/m-p/1517603

Re: Save styles as unique values, not layer name - Status changed to: In Product Plan

CraigWilliams — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 01:31:03 GMT

Re: Save styles as unique values, not layer name - Status changed to: Implemented

EdiePunt — Tue, 20 May 2025 21:53:50 GMT

Thank you for this idea. We implemented this in ArcGIS Pro 3.5 so that when you save items to a style, the unique value symbols are named after their symbol class value rather than the layer name.

See the Save items to a style help topic for more information.

See the Your Ideas in ArcGIS Pro 3.5 blog post for all the ideas we implemented in our latest release.

Re: Save styles as unique values, not layer name

JuliusP — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 23:28:30 GMT

It's nice to see this implemented! However, we are still using ArcGIS Pro. 3.3x as that is the recommended equivalence to ArcGIS Enterprise 11.3

Is there any recommendation/ dangers on having an ArcGIS Pro version ahead of the recommended version for your Enterprise?

Re: Save styles as unique values, not layer name

ShannonGonzales — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:35:40 GMT

Thank you for your question!

It is recommended that you use the equivalent versions of ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise to avoid compatibility errors and to ensure full functionality.

For reference, here are the equivalencies between ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise:

You can get more information about compatibility here: ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise compatibility.

I hope this helps answer your question. Please let us know if you need any additional information.

Thanks!