Change chart appearance

Your visualizations should be attractive as well as informative. Whether you want a dark chart background because you prefer to work in dark theme, or you want to customize the look of your charts before you share them, you can format your chart’s appearance through the Format tab in the Chart Properties pane or the Chart Format contextual ribbon tab.

You can choose one of the predefined system themes or use custom formatting for the text and symbol elements in your chart. When you’re satisfied with your chart’s appearance, you can save the format as a custom theme that can be applied to other charts.

Format text elements

A chart's text elements can include the following:

• Chart title
• Axis titles
• Axis labels
• Legend title
• Legend text
• Guide labels
• Data labels
• Description text

Format your chart's text elements using the following steps:

1. In the Chart Properties pane, on the Format tab, click the Text elements tab .
2. Choose and format text elements individually, or click All text to format all text elements at once.

Format symbol elements

A chart's symbol elements can include the following:

• Background color
• Axis lines
• Grid lines

Format your chart's symbol elements using the following steps:

1. In the Chart Properties pane, on the Format tab, click the Symbol elements tab .
2. Choose Background from the symbol element list, and change the color by picking a new color from the color picker drop-down menu.
3. Choose and format line elements individually, or click All lines to format all lines at once.

Save a custom theme

You can save chart format settings as a custom theme using the following steps:

1. Configure an existing chart's text and symbol elements as you would like them to be saved.
2. In the Chart Properties pane, on the Format tab, click the Chart themes tab , and then click Save as custom theme.
The format settings are saved as a new custom theme in the theme gallery.
3. Give your custom theme a descriptive name by right-clicking the theme and choosing Rename.
Chart themes can be permanently deleted from the theme gallery by right-clicking the theme and choosing Delete.

Note:

Custom themes are saved to %AppData%\ESRI\ArcGISPro\CustomGallery. Deleting a theme from the custom gallery permanently deletes the file.

Apply a chart theme

Apply an Esri-provided system theme or a custom theme to your chart using the following steps:

1. In the Chart Properties pane, on the Format tab, click the Chart themes tab , and then choose a theme icon from the theme gallery.
The theme is applied to the active chart. If desired, additional changes can be made to any of the text or symbol elements and saved as a new custom theme.