Adding a legend causes Pro to freeze indefinitely

[MathewBlanc]

I am trying to make a simple layout in ArcGIS Pro 3.5.2. My map has many layers, but I only have one turned on. When I drag to create a legend in the layout, the whole app freezes, I get a spinner, and it just never finishes loading. I have to kill the app from the task manager.

I have updated my graphics card driver, switched from OpenGL to DirectX 12, cleared my cache, restarted multiple times, checked I'm on the latest version. I don't have any plugins installed. I have seen the other post from 2023 with this issue, but those answers aren't working. 

The computer is running a Ryzen 7 5700X, 64GB ram, 12GB RTX 3060, and I have a terabyte of free storage. I don't think it's a resourcing issue.

I would really rather not have to re-do all my work in a new file (especially if I'm just going to get the same issue). 

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[MathewBlanc]

I just tried to "repair" the software in case something is wrong with it, and the repair tool is frozen! Ridiculous

[Eugene_Adkins]

You may have already tried this but if not, create a brand new aprx. Add random data and layout and see if the problem replicates. If it doesn’t, you know it’s limited to the aprx, which is likely the case. If no issues occur in the new aprx, use that aprx and simply copy your data to it. Not terribly convenient I know, but it could be better than starting from scratch.

[Robert_LeClair]

In a previous Esri Support Case, there was a similar issue to yours where one of the feature classes had empty geometry for the feature.  They ran the Repair Geometry GP tool to fix the issue and this seemed to correct the legend crashing issue they were experiencing.  I'd recommend running that first on your feature classes participating in the map view and try to add a new legend to your layout.  Does the issue persist?

[MathewBlanc]

Thanks everyone. In the end I made a new map in the same project and manually copied the layers I needed across. Adding this new map to the layout, I had no issues creating the legend.

I really wish there was better error handling in this software, it feels so brittle. If the missing geometry was the issue, is there a way to detect that? Or do I just have to run the Repair Geometry tool on dozens of layers until things start working?

[Robert_LeClair]

@MathewBlanc - typical workflow to determine any issues with geometry is to run the Check Geometry (Data Management)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation first then if there are errors, run the Repair Geometry GP tool describe earlier.  One can run most GP tools in "batch mode" as referenced here - Use batch geoprocessing—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation - to make it easier running GP tools on a large number of inputs.