Rectangle Background

Cartography · Graphic Backgrounds · ribbon tool with its own window · by Jeff Jenness

Works at every ArcGIS Pro license level

Summary

Draws a rectangle behind the selected graphic or layout elements, then groups the rectangle and the selection together with the rectangle underneath. The corners can be square, slightly rounded, or rounded all the way to a capsule. Use it to set a legend, a block of text, a scale bar or a cluster of elements on a clean panel. The dialog sets the rectangle's symbol, the transparency of its fill and outline separately, its size and its corner rounding.

A legend titled Elevation (m), with a gray ramp from 2806.568 down to 560.709, sitting on a white rounded rectangle with a dark outline over a dark gray elevation map, with a compass north arrow overlapping the rectangle's upper left corner — A rectangle background around a legend, beside one of the add-in's north arrows. The rectangle is white, so the legend's text stands out against the dark map.

How it works

The tool finds the rectangle that bounds everything selected (the selection's extent), draws a rectangle centered on it with the chosen symbol, and groups it behind the selection.

The size is set in one of two ways. As a percent of extent, 100% horizontal and 100% vertical match the extent exactly, and larger values leave a margin that grows with the size of the selection. In a linear unit, the two values are margins added beyond the extent, the horizontal one on the left and on the right, the vertical one at the top and at the bottom. A linear margin stays the same whatever the size of the selection, which is what keeps a set of panels consistent.

Rounding is the corner radius as a percentage of the rectangle's smaller dimension. 0 gives square corners. 50 is fully rounded: a square becomes a circle and any other rectangle becomes a capsule.

ArcGIS Pro can also do this by itself. Many layout elements have frame properties of their own, a border, a background and a simple shadow, and setting those draws a similar rectangle behind the element with no extra graphic at all. A frame set that way belongs to the element and adjusts itself automatically when the element is resized. This tool is for when you want a stable polygon element to work with, one that exists on its own: a background that can be given any polygon symbol, sized and placed independently of what it sits behind, or shared by several elements at once. It can also create a soft drop shadow that fades at the edge, like you would expect a shadow to do.

What to select first

The tool works on selected elements: graphics in a map's graphics layer, or elements on a layout (text, pictures, legends, north arrows, scale bars, map frames and so on). It does not work on features in a dataset. Select one element or several, then click the tool. If nothing is selected, the tool says so and stops.

The Cartography Tools gallery open on the ribbon, with the Rectangle button, in the Graphic Backgrounds row, outlined in blue — Where to find it: **Rectangle** is in the *Graphic Backgrounds* row of the *Cartography Tools* gallery, in the Cartography group of the *Wildlife and Forestry* tab.

On a map, the selected graphics must all be in one graphics layer. A selection that spans two graphics layers is turned away with a message.
If a selected element already belongs to a group, the whole group comes along. The tool never pulls a group apart.

A tour of the dialog

I have a scale bar that is drawing over a dark background and is difficult to see:

A black scale bar reading 0 to 10 kilometers drawn directly over a gray shaded elevation map, where its lines and numbers are hard to make out against the terrain — A black scale bar on a dark map.

I set up the tool to put a rectangle around the scale bar:

The Rectangle Background dialog: a graphic name of Shadowed_Rectangle, the Design symbology button with a pale gray gradient swatch, fill transparency 30, outline transparency 0, size units of inches, a horizontal margin of 0.2, a vertical margin of 0.15 and rounding of 10 percent. Below them the Drop shadow box is checked, with a black color, opacity 60 percent, an angle dial pointing to the upper left at 135 degrees, distance 5 points, spread 5 percent, size 4.41 points and 10 layers. A blue help button sits beside OK and Cancel — The dialog, with the size given as margins in inches: 0.2 inches added on the left and right of the scale bar, 0.15 inches above and below, and corners rounded by 10%. The symbol is a pale gray gradient at 30% fill transparency. The Drop shadow box is checked: a black shadow at 60% opacity, lit from the upper left (135°), shifted 5 points, with a soft edge about 4.4 points wide built from 10 layers.

That gives me this:

The same scale bar on the same map, now sitting on a pale, partly transparent rounded rectangle with a thin dark outline and a soft dark shadow along its right and lower edges, where every line and number is easy to read — The scale bar on its rectangle background: easier to read, and more cartographically interesting. The soft shadow along the right and lower edges lifts the panel off the map.

A background is one way to rescue a scale bar. Another is to change the color of the scale bar itself. The Element Color Helper tool changes every color in a scale bar, or in any selected elements, at once, so the bar can quickly be set to a bright color that is easy to distinguish.

Control	Explanation
Graphic name	Optional. The name given to the new rectangle. On a layout it is the name shown in the Contents pane; on a map, graphics are not listed there, and the name shows in the Element pane when the graphic is selected. The new group is named after it, with “Group” added. Left blank, the rectangle gets ArcGIS Pro's default name and the group is named Graphic Rectangle Group.
Symbology / Design symbology…	Opens ArcGIS Pro's own Format Polygon Symbol editor, gallery included, so the background can carry any polygon symbol: a solid fill, a gradient, a hatch, any outline. The swatch beside the button previews the chosen symbol before transparency is applied. The starting symbol is a pale yellow fill. The Format Polygon Symbol editor, with its Gallery of ready-made symbols on one tab and the symbol's layers on the other. Here, a 1-point black outline over a gradient fill.
Fill transparency (%)	0 to 100. Applies to the interior fill only. Gradient fills are made transparent evenly across the whole gradient.
Outline transparency (%)	0 to 100. Applies to the outline only, so a see-through fill can keep a solid border, or the reverse.
Size units	% of extent, or a linear unit. On a layout the choices are millimeters, centimeters, inches and points. On a map the only linear choice is the unit of the map's coordinate system. Switching between percent and a linear unit relabels the next two boxes and resets them to their neutral values (100 for percent, 0 for a margin).
Horizontal extent (%) / Horizontal margin	As a percent, the rectangle's width as a percentage of the extent's width. In a linear unit, the margin added on the left and on the right.
Vertical extent (%) / Vertical margin	As a percent, the rectangle's height as a percentage of the extent's height. In a linear unit, the margin added at the top and at the bottom.
Rounding (%)	Corner radius as a percentage of the rectangle's smaller dimension. 0 is square corners, 50 is fully rounded, and values above 50 are treated as 50.

Click OK and the rectangle is drawn. Cancel closes the dialog and changes nothing.

Drop shadow

Check Drop shadow and the tool draws a soft shadow beneath the rectangle, the kind that makes a panel look as if it is floating a little above the map. The controls follow the drop shadow settings in Adobe Photoshop, so they will be familiar if you have used those.

The scale bar example in the tour of the dialog above has one, and the dialog pictured there shows the settings that made it.

Control	Explanation
Color	The color of the shadow. Black or a dark gray is usual.
Opacity	How dark the shadow is at its darkest, from 0 to 100%.
Angle	The direction the light comes from. The shadow falls on the opposite side. Click or drag on the dial to point it at the light, or type the angle in degrees, measured counterclockwise from east: 90 is light from the top, and 135 is light from the upper left, the usual choice on a map.
Distance	How far the shadow is shifted away from the light. A larger distance makes the rectangle appear to float higher. 0 leaves the shadow directly underneath, showing evenly on all sides as a soft glow.
Spread	How much of the soft edge is made solid. 0 gives the softest edge. 100 gives a hard-edged shadow.
Size	The width of the soft edge. 0 gives a hard edge with no softening at all.
Layers	The number of pieces the soft edge is built from, 1 to 60. More layers give a smoother edge.

Distance and Size are in points on a layout, and in the units of the map's coordinate system on a map.

How the shadow is made. ArcGIS Pro graphics cannot be blurred, so the soft edge is built from a stack of plain polygons. Each is a copy of the rectangle's outline, shifted away from the light, with a solid fill that is mostly transparent. The copies are made in a graded series of sizes, the largest a little bigger than the outline and the smallest a little smaller. Where more of them overlap, the shadow is darker, so it fades smoothly from nothing at its outer edge to the full opacity inside. The opacity of each copy is worked out so that the darkest part is exactly the opacity you asked for, however many layers you choose.

The shape of the rectangle itself is cut out of every layer. The shadow therefore lies around the background and never underneath it, and a partly transparent background keeps its own color and is not darkened by its shadow.

The shadow's layers are ordinary polygon graphics. They are grouped together, and that group sits below the rectangle inside the new group.

What you get

One new rectangle graphic, placed behind the selected elements, and one new group that holds the rectangle and everything that was selected, along with the drop shadow if one was asked for. Because they are grouped, the background and its contents move, resize and copy together.

Layouts give you more room to work ArcGIS Pro is much more flexible with graphic elements on a layout than on a map. On a layout, the Contents pane lists every element. Expand the group there and you can select the rectangle by itself, edit it, hide it and show it again. On a map, the Contents pane shows only the graphics layer and does not list the graphics inside it. A group can only be selected as a whole, so its members cannot be picked out one at a time. To change the rectangle on a map, select the group and ungroup it (right-click the group, or use Arrange on the Graphics tab), make the change, then select the pieces and group them again. Be careful with the Visible check box in the Element pane too: on a map, a graphic that has been made invisible can no longer be clicked, and with no list to pick it from there is no way to select it again and turn it back on.

The rectangle is an ordinary ArcGIS Pro graphic. Nothing about it is special once it is drawn, so it can be edited by hand like any other: select it and use the Element pane to change its symbol, its size, its position or its name.

Nothing else is altered. The selected elements keep their own symbols, sizes and positions.

The tool remembers your choices

After a successful run, the symbol and every setting in the dialog are stored with the project, so the next background starts where the last one left off and a set of backgrounds comes out matching. Each of the four Graphic Background tools keeps its own settings. The graphic name is never remembered. The settings are saved when the project is saved.

Recommended citation

Jenness, J. 2026. Rectangle Background. 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

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

Licensing information

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

Element Color Helper — changes the colors of selected elements, a scale bar among them, all at once: another way to make it stand out.
Circle Background — a circle behind the selection, the natural fit for a compass rose or any round element.
Polygon Background — a background that follows the actual shape of the selected elements.
Minimum Convex Polygon Background — the tightest convex outline around the selected elements.
Create Shadow Polygons — a soft shadow of fading rings around the polygons of a feature class, where these tools shadow graphics.