Element Color Helper

Cartography · Cartographic Helpers · ribbon tool with its own window · by Jeff Jenness

Works at every ArcGIS Pro license level

Summary

Changes the colors of the selected layout or map elements all at once. Select a legend, a scale bar, a north arrow, a block of text, a drawn polygon, any mix of them, and the window lists every color found in them by what it is used for. Check the rows to change, pick a new color, and apply. A dark map with a black legend, scale bar and north arrow becomes a dark map with white ones in a few clicks, and every color keeps whatever transparency it had.

I have great respect for the sophisticated options Esri provides for designing and symbolizing these elements. You can really express your artistic side with all the options available, and we have Esri to thank for that. But I have had many times where all I wanted to do was change all the colors to something with more contrast against the background, and it can be really tedious traversing all the Element panes and options trying to find each color parameter to change. This tool is for those times.

A layout with a dark gray basemap of the Grand Canyon Village area, scattered green, yellow, blue and red spring symbols, and in black, barely visible against the dark ground: a legend titled World_Springs with four inventory levels, a compass north arrow, a scale bar in kilometers, a circle around a cluster of springs at the upper left, and a wavy freehand line — A dark basemap with a black legend, north arrow, scale bar, a circle around some springs and a freehand line. They can barely be seen.

The same layout after the tool: the legend text, the scale bar, the north arrow, the circle and the freehand line are now bright yellow, and the circle's fill is a translucent yellow through which the dark ground and the springs still show — The same layout after every black color was changed to yellow in one pass. The circle's fill, which was partly transparent, is still partly transparent.

How it works

Select the elements on the layout, or the graphics in a map's graphics layer, and click Element Color Helper in the Cartographic Helpers row of the Cartography gallery. The window opens beside the layout and follows the selection: change the selection and the table changes with it. A selected group is treated as its members.

The Cartography Tools gallery open on the ribbon, with the Element Color Helper button, in the Cartographic Helpers row, outlined in blue — Where to find it: **Element Color Helper** is in the *Cartographic Helpers* row of the *Cartography Tools* gallery, in the Cartography group of the *Wildlife and Forestry* tab.

The window reads the definition of each selected element and lists every color it finds, one row for each color and what it is used for. Black used for text, for lines and for fills is three rows, so each can be given a different new color, or left alone.

The Element Color Helper window. The heading reads: 5 elements selected on the layout: 2 graphics, 1 legend, 1 north arrow, 1 scale bar. The table has four rows, all checked, each with a black swatch: Black for Text, 33 uses, in Legend and Scale Bar 3; Black for Lines, 5 uses, in Circle 1, Freehand and Scale Bar 3; Black with a star for Fills, 1 use, in Circle 1; and Black for Markers, 1 use, in North Arrow. Each row's New column shows a yellow swatch and #FFFF00. The color picker below shows yellow, and the status line reads: 4 rows will become #FFFF00. Click Apply to change the elements — The window for the layout above, with all five elements selected. Black turns up in four uses: the text of the legend and the scale bar, the lines of the circle, the freehand line and the scale bar, the fill of the circle (starred, because it is partly transparent) and the marker of the north arrow. All four rows are checked and have been assigned yellow; Apply makes the change.

Column	Meaning
Check box	Check the rows that should get the new color. Check All and Uncheck All do all the rows at once.
Color	A swatch and a name: Black, White, Gray 50%, or the hexadecimal code of any other color. A star after the name means the color is partly transparent in some of its uses.
Used for	Text: the letters of text, labels, legend entries and scale bar numbers. Lines: a scale bar's line and division marks, the outlines of drawn graphics. Fills: the fills of drawn graphics, the bars of a scale bar, the colors of a gradient. Markers: the glyph of an Esri north arrow, point markers. Two more appear only when their boxes are checked: Halos, shadows, callouts and Element frames.
Uses	How many colors in the selection this row stands for.
New	The color the row will become when Apply is clicked. Empty for a row that is left alone.
In	The names of the elements the color was found in.

Then:

Check the rows to change.
Pick the new color with the color picker next to New color for the checked rows, and click Assign. The New column shows it. Clear takes it away again.
Repeat for other rows that should get a different color.
Click Apply. Every element in the selection gets its new colors, and the table is read again from the changed elements.

Restore Original Colors puts every element the window has changed back the way it was before the window first changed it, however many times Apply has been clicked since. The window keeps each element's original definition for as long as it is open. ArcGIS Pro's own Undo works as well: each click of Undo puts back one element.

Why one row for each use

A double-fill scale bar alternates black and white bars. If every color in it were simply set to white, the bars would vanish into each other. With a row for each color and use, the black rows can be set to white and the white row left alone, and the bar still alternates, now in white and white-on-dark. The same goes for a white halo around black text: once the text is white, the halo wants to be dark, not white. The halos sit in their own rows, shown only when Include text halos, shadows and callouts is checked, so they can be given their own color or left as they are.

Transparency

Each color keeps its own transparency. A line drawn at 60 percent opacity stays at 60 percent opacity in its new color, and an opaque fill stays opaque. The transparency of the color picked in the color picker is not used.

What is left alone

Pictures. A picture has no colors to change. That includes picture elements, and the north arrows and graphics placed by this add-in's own North Arrows and Add Graphics tools, which are pictures. A north arrow from Esri's own gallery is a font glyph, and it is recolored.
Legend patches. A legend's definition holds only its text: the title, layer names, headings and labels. The patches come from the map's layers and are never touched.
Element frames, the border, background and shadow of an element, unless Include element frames is checked. With it unchecked, a white background box behind a legend stays white when the legend's text turns white.
Text halos, shadows and callout backgrounds, unless Include text halos, shadows and callouts is checked.
Color-locked symbol layers, the layers whose color is locked in Pro's symbol editor, and layers that are switched off.

Recommended citation

Jenness, J. 2026. Element Color Helper. Wildlife and Forestry Tools add-in for ArcGIS Pro, v. 1.113.62.1 (October 2026). Jenness Enterprises. Available at: https://github.com/JeffJenness/Wildlife_Tools.

Credits and references

By Jeff Jenness, Jenness Enterprises (www.jennessent.com).

The basemap under the maps in the figures on this page is Esri's Dark Gray Canvas basemap (sources: Esri, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community).

Esri. 2026. Dark Gray Canvas [basemap]. ArcGIS Online, Esri, Redlands, California. arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=7742cd5abef8497288dc81426266df9b. Accessed on 18 October 2026.

Licensing information

Works at every ArcGIS Pro license level (Basic, Standard, Advanced). No extension licenses are required.

Rectangle Background — a background behind a scale bar or legend, the other way to rescue one from a busy map.
Circle Background — a circle behind a north arrow or compass rose.
North Arrows and Add Graphics — this add-in's own north arrows and graphics, which are pictures and keep their colors.