arcgis-pronorth-arrowstyle
I need to be able to add a custom north arrow to achieve a standardized look for maps I make for my company. I've been reading through the ArcGIS Pro documentation and have come to a loss on what I'm missing. The documentation clearly states as follows.
I am attempting to add the north arrow to the "Favorites" style. However, nowhere do I see the option for "New Item". All I can find is the add, create, or import options.
I ran the test code below which is near identical to yours.
import arcpy
mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(r"C:\temp\test.mxd")
for elm in arcpy.mapping.ListLayoutElements(mxd, "MAPSURROUND_ELEMENT"):
print elm.name
if elm.name == "North Arrow":
print elm.style
elm.style = "ESRI North 1"
mxd.save()
del mxd
What you will notice is that the print elm.style reports:
Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:/temp/test5.py", line 7, in print elm.style AttributeError: 'MapSurroundElement' object has no attribute 'style'
So the reason your code achieves nothing is that it simply sets a Python variable called elm.style to the value "ESRI North 1" rather than setting a non-existent property called style of an ArcPy MapSurroundElement object.
I do not know of a way to change the style of a North Arrow using ArcPy so, if no one else does either, then I recommend that someone create an ArcGIS Idea to have ArcPy provided with a writable property on its MapSurroundElement objects.
There's an option under Item Properties to do this, but it's only available for an Image item, not an Arrow, which may be why you're not seeing it. You need to add your north arrow from an image (Layout -> Add Image). Once you do, there's a checkbox under Image rotation to sync the rotation with your map:
Best Answer
The documentation here appears to be wrong - I get the same result as you. (perhaps the documentation has been completed for a yet to be released version of ArcGIS Pro)
If you click New Style here, it will allow you to create a custom style (as opposed to the included system styles).
Once the new style is created, I found I had to open one of the existing styles such as ArcGIS 2D (right-click > Manage) select a style item and Right-Click > Copy. Then in my new custom style I Right-Click Paste. Once this was done I could right-click within my new style and create New style items.
That all said, I couldn't find any North Arrows in either the existing styles nor an option to create one.
I just found the "New Item" (although there's no North Arrow option in it that I can see). On the Home tab: