Space between Legend columns is excessive

[ForestCare]

The maps I create have mandated scales and I try to get them to fit as often as possible onto standard page sizes to reduce printing costs. Legends, however, have become the bane of my existence in ArcPro because the different spacing options all appear to leave large chasms of unused space between items

I've tried fruitlessly to mess around with the various spacing options looking for the cause of the extra room, here is a the spacing settings for the above legend

Grateful for any tips, tricks or advice!

[Eugene_Adkins]

The width in your legend columns do seem quite exaggerated for a 0 pt setting. This is not something I can replicate, although I may be using an older version of Pro than you. I also know the latest versions of Pro was experiencing some buggy behavior with legends and perhaps this may be a part of the issue?

Here's a screen shot of a similarly setup legend to yours, with one main exception seeming to be that I do not include layer names:

You may notice somewhat of a gap between the first and second column. I believe this is due to the length of the longest label in other columns. Although there are different columns, the labels are being treated as if there is one column. If I turn off the "Equal column widths" option (which you have checked/turned on in the arrangement/fitting strategy column, this is the result I get:

You can see I get a greatly reduced space between the first and second column. Perhaps this may be the solution you're looking for?

*Edit: You may also want to try using "Adjust columns and font size" in the fitting strategy dropdown so the font size itself will get adjusted as you adjust the size of the legend. 

[ForestCare]

Thanks for so much effort on the reply.

[AubriKinghorn · Accepted solution]

Thanks for providing all the information!

It looks like you have word wrapping set for 1.5 inches for descriptions, but don't have any descriptions. When you have equal column widths checked and word wrapping set the column width is determined by those word wrapping values. So the legend things every column needs to be 3 in (1.5 in for labels, 1.5 in for descriptions). If you uncheck the word wrapping or change those values I think you can get the experience you want.

[ForestCare]

Thank you, this was exactly the detail I was missing and by adjusting the word wrapping values I was able to get the legend to look like what I wanted. Sorry for not replying sooner, I didn't see a notification that anyone had responded to my post.