How to rotate legend in matlab 2019

Hi, I would like to rotate the legend from horizontal layout to vertical layout, just as shown in the picture below. Could anyone share some experience about this?

Thanks for you coming help!

Alden

[Walter Roberson]

Someone recently asked much the same thing; see https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/538259-rotate-a-horizontal-matlab-legend-so-that-it-is-parallel-to-the-y-axis

[CHEN Jianghua]

Thank you so much. I will keep an eye on that.

Answer 1

[Sai Sri Pathuri]

There is no direct function to rotate legends in graphs using MATLAB.

However, as a workaround we can manually rotate the legends. Please refer to the following example:

% create a sample plot
h1 = plot(1:5);
% add legend to the graph
[legend_handle, icons] = legend('Sample legend');
% disable the box around the legend object
set(legend_handle, 'Box', 'off')
% get the current position of the legend object
leg_pos=get(legend_handle,'position');
% assign the required position of the legend to a new variable
new_leg_pos=[.7 0.6 .2 leg_pos(4)+.2] ;
% Get current line data (horizontal line)
xd = icons(2).XData;
yd = icons(2).YData;
% Swap X and Y data for line (make vertical line)
icons(2).XData = yd;
icons(2).YData = xd;
% Rotate and reposition the text
set(icons(1),'rotation',90)
icons(1).Position = [0.5 0.4 0];
% Adjust legend size to accomodate changes.
set(legend_handle,'position',new_leg_pos);

[CHEN Jianghua]

Thank you so much. Your code teaches me a lot.

[Adam Wincukiewicz]

Hi,

unfortunately this code doesn't work in my case. Output says: Unrecognized method, property, or field 'XData' for class 'matlab.graphics.primitive.world.Group'.

Error is here: xd = icons(2).XData;

Do you have any idea what to do?

Thank you for your time.

[Walter Roberson]

Adam Wincukiewicz: which MATLAB release are you executing in?

[Joan Sturm]

I do have the same problem and I'm working with R2020a.

[yuxuan]

This only works on the plot figure, when i use the 'errorbar' function same error shows up.