topic Horizontal Unclassed Color Legend in Pro in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Horizontal Unclassed Color Legend in Pro

Anonymous User — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 17:03:58 GMT

I have a polygon layer that I have symbolized with an unclassed light to dark blue color scheme. When I add a legend, it shows a vertical bar. How can I turn it so that the colored bar runs horizontally?

I'm getting this:

Pro gives me this.

I want the legend to look like this:

How do I get this result?

Re: Horizontal Unclassed Color Legend in Pro

jcarlson — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 17:31:00 GMT

In Pro, you probably can't, honestly. Or at least, I'm not aware of the option. To get "fancy" legends like that, your best bet is to export your layout to a format like AIX, maybe SVG, open it in separate design software, then make the final tweaks there.

It's an unfortunate shortcoming of the Pro legend, but if you're handy with other software (Inkscape is a nice, free SVG editor), it's easy enough to make a legend like you describe.

If you export it with the vertical bar legend in place, you'll have the numbers and color values already there, and can easily modify that feature to be the horizontal bar.

Workaround in Pro: Rotate your Legend, Add Text

Maybe a multi-program workflow isn't your jam, I get it. There is a way to do this in Pro, but it's only going to work if this color bar is the only thing in your legend.

Set the Patch Height/Width of the Legend Item to be very narrow and skinny.
On the Legend, set the rotation to 90.
Create Text elements to represent the boundaries of the color bar. I really tried, but there doesn't seem to be a good way to get the built-in text to render in a pleasing way. You can see in the screenshot below the red dots where my attempted legend labels are having trouble.
If you have other elements in your legend, just add a second legend element for those.

Re: Horizontal Unclassed Color Legend in Pro

Anonymous User — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 15:09:56 GMT

Thanks Josh!

This is a good workaround. I had actually thought of doing this, but was hoping for a true option somewhere in the menus instead of a workaround. I hadn't thought of using Inkscape though. I always forget about that option!

Re: Horizontal Unclassed Color Legend in Pro

jcarlson — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 15:18:59 GMT

You should post it in Pro Ideas! I'll upvote it if you do. The folks on the Layout dev team are remarkably responsive.

Re: Horizontal Unclassed Color Legend in Pro

Anonymous User — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 17:19:03 GMT

Good idea - here is the post.