Legend not working

[DeweyEvans]

Why is my Legend not pulling in the features?  All I ever get is this yellow box that says "Legend" and I cannot figure out how to make it work.

[RickeyFight]

Try making your legend box bigger. Some times it throws an error when it is not large enough.

You can then go to the settings and make the text smaller for the legend.

[DeweyEvans]

Unfortunately no dice...one of my items, Site Boundary, just refuses to show up even though it is visible in the map and selected on the legend.  Layout map is consistently the most frustrating component of ArcGIS.

[TomBole]

Hi Dewey, 

An empty legend may occur when a layer that does not support a legend, such as a basemap layer, is selected in the Contents pane.  For example, in the screenshot below I have a basemap layer "World Light Gray Canvas Base" selected in the Contents pane.

In cases where I have a layer, or layers, selected in the Contents pane the legend will only show items for the selected layers.  In this case, the selected layer is not supported by the legend, so the legend is blank.

If you want all layers that support legends to appear in the legend you can doe this in a couple of ways.  You can drag & drop the layers you want into a legend. You can drag and drop these into the Legend item in the Contents pan, or you can drop them on top of the legend on the page layout itself.

If no layer is selected in the Contents pane a new legend will add items for all supported layers depending on the map synchronizing options chosen for the legend.

For more information please see Add a legend—Layouts | Documentation, Work with a legend—Layouts | Documentation and Work with a legend item—Layouts | Documentation .

Hope this helps, 

Tom