arcgis-10.0arcgis-desktoplayoutslegendsymbology
I have a problem with the legends in the ArcMap because the patch does not show the marker symbol inside it well.
Whenever, I move the legend it changes but never to what I want for every patch.
I have tried legend properties, and so on but nothing helped me.
You can see my legend here.
The only solution we've found to date is one you've already rejected: convert to graphics. (Though I've not experienced the "move label, marker disapeared" problem you mention.) We just sigh, curse a little, suck it up and keep going. On the bright side this allows us to do things not otherwise possible. In this example below any given polygon on the map can have one, two or all three of the line types shown. Collapsing all the possibilities to one legend patch does wonders for conserving real estate, and makes it easier for the map reader to comprehend in the process. It's a gain worth the pain. Thanks go to Gary Stronghill for the design idea.
It's a slight fudge but try setting Width and Height on the Override default patch size part of the Legend Item properties to be very small but not zero i.e. 0.001. In my test it looks like the patch is either not there at all, or is too small to see. If you set to 0 then patches return to original size.
Best Answer
To achieve the effect that you are after I think you will need to experiment with static legends which you can create using Convert To Graphics on the Legend Properties.
Do the patches without marker/text and then use the Draw toolbar to centre the text/marker in each taking care to match the size, font, etc.