topic Re: Map Layout Legend Contents - Dynamic Thematic Map Series Filtering? in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Map Layout Legend Contents - Dynamic Thematic Map Series Filtering?

JasperRomero — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:19:50 GMT

Hello Community,

Hoping for some input on whether this can be accomplished by currently available means, and if not, whether folks know of an Idea that has already been submitted.

I recently used the Thematic Map Series workflow for making layouts for the first time, so I had several Radio Layer Groups in my Map Contents with multiple copies of the same source layers. In general, each map showed different subsets of the same source data. While the Legend Element configuration options to only show populated layers and only show visible layers in the legend worked as expected, it was very unwieldy to try to manually configure Legend order in the Drawing Order contents with several dozen layers, many of which shared names.

Is there any way to get the Drawing Order Legend Contents to only show the layers that are in the currently toggled radio group? This would be a huge quality of life improvement for making Map series.

Thanks in advance for any inputs or suggestions!

Re: Map Layout Legend Contents - Dynamic Thematic Map Series Filtering?

VenkataKondepati — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:41:24 GMT

As per my understanding, there’s no built-in way for the Legend Drawing Order pane to automatically filter down to only the layers in the currently active radio group

Re: Map Layout Legend Contents - Dynamic Thematic Map Series Filtering?

AlfredBaldenweck — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:23:56 GMT

Does "Only show features visible in the map extent" not work for you?

Re: Map Layout Legend Contents - Dynamic Thematic Map Series Filtering?

JasperRomero — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:32:11 GMT

@AlfredBaldenweck it removes layers from the Legend element on the Layout - what I am asking about here is having the Legend Contents (lefthand panel, default sorted by Drawing Order) dynamically reflect only the layers present in the current Map in a Series. When making a Series of several maps that show different subsets of the same source layers, the Legend Contents gets difficult to navigate and organize pretty quickly.

I am stuck with Pro 3.4.3 for the foreseeable future, so maybe this is addressed in the current release, but I haven't been able to find documentation of that yet.

Re: Map Layout Legend Contents - Dynamic Thematic Map Series Filtering?

AlfredBaldenweck — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:34:34 GMT

Oh, I understand. That is a toughy. Best I could do is just make multiple legends. If you make an Idea for this I'd upvote it.

Re: Map Layout Legend Contents - Dynamic Thematic Map Series Filtering?

JasperRomero — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:36:58 GMT

Thanks, will keep this thread posted if I make an Idea. Even being able to set up Group Layers in Legend Contents the way we can in Map Contents (or better yet, just pulling Groups from Map Contents to Legend Contents) would be great.