How to adjust the position of the legend elements?

Question

I have a figure with several plots and a legend. Is it possible to manually change the arrangement of elements in the legend? For example, how could you make a two-column legend?

Answer 1

Of course it is possible. See explanation here: http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/multi-column-grid-legend/

Answer 2

To make a two-column legend, the general consensus seems to be that you need to create two separate legends and manually place them side by side. The solution is simplified from the discussion here .

x = 1:10; y1 = rand(1, 10); y2 = rand(1, 10); h1 = plot(x, y1, '-'); hold on h2 = plot(x, y2, '-.r'); ah1 = gca; ah2 = axes('position',get(gca,'position'), 'visible','off'); legend(ah1, h1, 'Location', [0.5 0.85 0.15 0.05], 'y1') legend(ah2, h2, 'Location', [0.7 0.85 0.15 0.05], 'y2') 

Answer 3

There are two entries in MathWorks File Exchange that create multi-column legends for you:

• columnlegend Simon Henin (who was the MATLAB Central Center Choice of the week )
• gridLegend - multi-column format for Adrian legends

Answer 4

Besides the views mentioned by @gnovice, there is another file in MathWorks File Exchange that also creates multi-column legends

• legendflex: more flexible legend Kelly Kearney

Answer 5

In 2018a, the legend has the NumColumns parameter; for example, if h is an array of descriptors of the constructed lines, and leg_names is an array of name cells for each row:

 hleg = legend(h, leg_names, 'FontSize', fontsize); set(hleg, 'NumColumns', 2); set(hleg, 'Location', 'south');