MATLAB: Tweak legend entries without creating a new legend

Question

I have created a plot with a legend and now I would like to edit legend entries without recreating the whole legend. For example, for five legend entries I would like to reorder them like

newOrder = [2 3 5 4 1];

I can reorder the entries by first getting current legend handles and strings like this:

[~,~,plot_h,text_strings] = legend;

And then I can reorder the entries like this:

legend(plot_h(newOrder),text_strings{newOrder})

However, this doesn't only reorder the legend; it seems to delete the legend I'd already created, with its perfect placement and color scheme, etc, and creates a new legend with entries in the correct new order. How can I edit these entries without screwing up the placement, colors, boxoff, etc that I've already set?

Answer 1

I did not quite figure out how to edit an existing legend, but I did work up this function that does what I needed it to do.