Symbology and Style

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by abuckley on September 28, 2010

Symbols and styles in ArcGIS 10.0

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By Aileen Buckley, Mapping Center Lead

There are some great new enhancements to the way you work with stylesand symbols in ArcGIS 10! Finding the right symbol and managing styles isnow simpler and easier.

Searching for Symbols

Finding appropriate symbols to apply to your features and graphics is easy inArcGIS 10 because you can search for and use symbols without having to

know to which style they belong, nor have that style referenced. When searching for symbols, you cansearch within all styles available on your system—including your custom styles—or you can limit searchresults to only those styles currently referenced.

Symbols in ArcGIS 10 have searchable tags that describe graphic characteristics, such color or type.These tags can be modified for symbols in custom styles to describe any relevant characteristic, such as arelated project, map, layer, scale, or specification.

The Symbol Selector dialog box

The Symbol Selector dialog box is more customizable in ArcGIS 10. You can adjust the way that symbols

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are drawn and arranged in the Symbol Selector dialog box, which you can now resize to see more symbolsat once. You can choose to group symbols by the style file in which they are contained or by their category.

Pausing the mouse pointer over a symbol on the Symbol Selector dialog box opens a pop-up that listsrelevant information for each symbol.

Referencing Styles

You can now choose exactly which styles you would like referenced each time you open a new mapdocument. You can turn off the styles you don’t use, and turn on the styles you do.


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Just choose the styles you want to display on the Style References dialog box, then click the Set as DefaultList button. Any new map document will automatically reference this set of styles you selected.

The Style Manager

In ArcGIS 10 access to the Style Manager is also easier. In earlier versions of the software, you opened theStyle Manager dialog box from Tools > Styles > Style Manager. In ArcGIS 10 there is now one less click; it’snow accessible from Customize > Style Manager. Also, you can manage referenced styles from the sameStyle References dialog box found in the Symbol Selector within the Style Manager.


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Like the Symbol Selector dialog box, the Style Manager dialog box is also resizable. The Details viewshows you the tags for each symbol.

In ArcGIS 10, Esri-provided styles are read-only. This helps prevent inadvertently modifying the standardset of symbols that are common to all users. It also means that you won’t lose any modifications if youneed to reinstall the software – this alleviates those situations in which symbols you’ve modified used to getdeleted or lost when a new version of the software was installed, You can easily use any Esri-providedsymbol as a starting point to creating your own symbols. Simply cut and paste symbols into a custom styleusing the Style Manager dialog box.

Export maps styles

You can still Export Map Styles but you will find that the command is no longer available directly in the userinterface. You can add it by clicking Customize, then clicking Customize Mode. On the Commands tab,either type Export Map Styles into the “Show commands containing…” area or scroll down to the Toolscommands to find the Export Map Styles tool. Click, hold and drag it to any toolbar in your interface.


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You can place the tool on any existing toolbar in your interface so that you have easy access to it when youneed it.

Using 9.x Styles in ArcGIS 10

An ArcGIS style is really a Microsoft Access database. In ArcGIS 10, the database schema has changedfor some symbol types. When you open a style from a previous release in ArcGIS 10, new fields are addedto the database table to support the new search capabilities. You simply open and use a style from aprevious release in ArcGIS 10. Because of the schema change, not all symbols are backward compatibleto previous versions. If you work in an environment where you need to use both ArcGIS 10 styles andstyles from a previous version, make a copy of the older styles and name them appropriately, beforeopening and modifying them in ArcGIS 10.

Thanks to Jaynya Richards, Edie Punt, and David Watkins for their help with this blog entry!

October 20, 2010 at 11:23 am

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February 19, 2011 at 2:02 am

abuckley says:

Thanks for the comments!

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dmcconna says:

I created style files in 9.3.1 that do not seem to work with rasters in 10. I can add them, and use them on vector data, but not on raster data.

The colors just do not show up in the palette. How do I name them appropriately (if that is the problem) so that 10 can use them?


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February 1, 2012 at 12:50 pm Log in to Reply

March 22, 2013 at 5:43 am

efcza says:

pretty late but I tried upload old style (9.3) to ArcGIS 10.. well.. it is working but it looks like different, not correct… what to do? some symbols

are replaced with otherones…

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March 22, 2013 at 10:14 am

Jaynya says:

It is very likely that when your styles were copied over, the fonts they require may not have accompanied them. In order for the marker

symbols (especially) to appear correctly, both items must be install.

The older version (9.3) style will open in 10x but it will not be available in the same way as in 9.3 after being opened in 10x due to schema

having been added in 10x.(see the last paragraph of the blog entry above)

One first step is check that the version 10x fonts are in the windows fonts directory. If they are missing, then install them,and the styles

should appear correctly.

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December 8, 2014 at 10:32 am

lapierce says:

Are there any enhancements for exporting a 10.1 style to 10.0 ?

Suggestions ?

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December 11, 2014 at 11:57 am

abuckley says:

We cannot support backwards compatibility in styles. The reason why a newer version of a style may not work in a previous version of

the software is due to a change in the persistence of the objects that make up a style. For example, this can include extensive code

changes to marker symbols such as when we began supporting additional picture types including png. The previous version of the

software will not support these types of pictures which is why the style will fail.

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