Create and manage Legend directly in the Layout View

[JurajKrumpolec]

Significant improvements are needed in the field of Legend Element creation and management to be more interactive and flexible, to allow for faster and more effective workflow. No wizards or cumbersome dialog boxes necessary. This idea makes use of functionality proposed by https://community.esri.com/ideas/3260.

Fast and easy Legend creation:

• Drag and Drop selected layers from TOC directly to the Layout.
• Context menu in TOC: Add to Legend/Remove from Legend options.
• Legend context menu: Add/Remove Item.

Flexible Legend management and formatting:

• Resizing Legend Element horizontally and vertically distributes Legend Items into columns and wraps legend text, especially labels into multiple rows.
• More different shapes of Legend’s frame (not only rectangle). Wrap Legend’s contents around graphics in the Layout. Change vertical content’s alignment.
• Threading Legend Elements – allow contents to flow between connected Legends in different parts of the Layout. Possibility to rotate Legend Element.
• Edit Legend’s spacing with possibility to parametrically define each size directly in the Layout.
• Change Appearance and Arrangement of all Items directly in Legend’s context menu.
• Access map connection settings directly through Legend context menu. Possibility to define custom reference scale.
• Insert special-purpose formatting objects: Line, Heading, Space, Column Break, etc.
• Introduce overall Legend Style, which would define Legend properties and formatting including: items format, spacing between legend’s parts, title format, etc.
• Legend context menu example

Interactive Legend Items manipulation, formatting and display:

• Reorder, move or copy legend’s items directly in the Layout by drag & drop inside single Legend Element or between different Legends.
• Possibility to replace items by drag &drop while preserving item’s formatting and settings.
• Insert Placeholder or Proxy to temporarily take the place of currently unavailable layer.
• Access Legend Items directly from the Layout. Apply style or custom formatting, patch shape and size to item parts, multiple items selected or the whole legend. Possibility for each item to have custom background.
• Control display of: Item, Name, Heading, Label, Description, Patch for selected/all items.
• Legend Item context menu example:

Provide serious Undo functionality.Related idea: https://community.esri.com/ideas/3660

[AubriKinghorn]

Thank you everyone who has commented on or kudo-ed this idea!

Several things originally mentioned have been implemented in new versions of ArcGIS Pro, including dragging and dropping items from the map into legends, reordering legend items in the Contents Pane, spacing options for legend items, and legend styles. 

At this time we are going to close this idea. The guidelines for Ideas (listed here) state that each idea post should only have a single idea. Otherwise it gets really hard to understand which pieces of the idea are most important and figure out what has and hasn't been implemented. With that in mind, this idea will be closed out. Pieces of this idea that are not yet implemented can be added as new ideas and voted on. For example you can vote to add items to the legend via a layer context menu here.

Thanks again!

-Aubri Kinghorn