Why in 2025a figure Export Setup have been removed?

Good morning to everyone,

I have just bought a new laptop, downloaded 2025a, opened a figure I created with 2024b and BOOM I realized (with great regret!) that the "Figure Export Setup" have been removed...

In my academic and professional experience it was an essential feature to produce figures and plots in line with the specific request (journal article, technical report, presentation etc..) and coherent throughout the work for whant concerns font size, figure dimensions and features.

I know that now there's the "uiexportdlg" https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2025a/matlab/ref/uiexportdlg.html but, in my humble opinion, there is no comparison at all. Is there a way to be able to save profiles for the export of figures as was done in the old “File” > “Export Setup” mode? And, above all, does anyone know the reason why this feature was removed? I simply can't get the point about it.

I'm not the reactionary kind of software users, but I'm seriously thinking about switching back to 2024b.

[yali]

agree

[Bowen]

I also hope the 2024 or earlier version of the image window style will return. As Riccardo stated, it's incredibly convenient for fine-tuning images and allows for instant observation of changes, rather than blindly adjusting through code and repeatedly rerunning sections… For example, the DPI setting, which I found only in the new style's "save as," resulted in a different image size than my previous work; and when resizing by pixels, the font size didn't change accordingly, forcing me to abandon the 2025 version. The more cumbersome "Property Inspector," the inability to draw different images separately in a new window, the black background when saving images in a dark theme, and the new tabs being very difficult to use when the window size is small are also issues. I appreciate your new design and optimizations for the new version, but please consider that users have the right to choose the older version.

[Adelle]

Completely agree with the call for the return of the full export settings. It was an excellent way to ensure consistency between figures in a document being able to save and load layouts. I routinely use the scaling for line widths and font sizes as they are usually too small for presentation purposes - programmatically changing each and every part is much more work.

I have just reinstalled 2024b...

[Michael]

I also totally agree, after quite a lot of fighting with the new features (for a task that used to take me seconds) I have reverted back to 2024b just to be able to save figures in a sensible way.

[Riccardo]

Has anyone installed R2026? Did they bring us all a big gift restoring the export setup?

Answer 1

[Anita]

Thanks for your questions and feedback. As of R2025a, the recommended workflow is to set figure properties, such as fonts, line properties, tick values, and renderer, either interactively or programmatically before opening the uiexportdlg dialog box. The uiexportdlg dialog options are automatically saved and restored, but it’s not possible to save and load different export styles.

This change was made to simplify the export dialog interface. You can find more details here:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/release-notes.html?startrelease=R2025a&endrelease=R2025a&rntext=exportsetupdlg&groupby=release&sortby=descending&searchHighlight=exportsetupdlg

We understand that this change may impact your workflow, and we value your input. Could you please share which settings you typically expect to configure through the uiexportdlg dialog? Additionally, which settings do you consider important to preserve and restore in your workflow?

[Riccardo]

Thanks, Anita, for your answer!

I do not consider myself an expert of typography, but here are some of the settings I found more useful in the workflow I have developed so far:

• First, I found fundamental to determine the exact dimension of the picture, consistently for the destination of it. For example, a 10cm x 8cm figure is perfect for an A4/Letter document, while normally I go for 17cm x 8cm in case of wide figures. Bigger figures are used in beamers and slides.
• Once set the dimension, font size can simply match the one of the documents you are writing.
• Normally I like to use a font which is coherent to the one used in the document (ex. TeX Gyre Pagella / Palatino Lynotype, Times New Roman ecc.). I normally prefer serif fonts for plots even if the document uses sans-serif ones, even if probably I am breaking some "good typography" principles.
• Of course, the option "expand axes to fill figure" is ticked.
• Normally, I export figures in .png format, 600dpi, as I encountered some fonts incompatibility with the .eps export and also because they are easier to be edited later, if needed.

These are only some of the things I used in my usual workflow, they are mainly self-taught, and are not intended to be a guide for anyone! ! I was just wondering if I was the only one facing this problem, and I hope they may be useful in some way.

p.s. I installed r2024b too. I code with 2025a, then I save the .fig and I open it with the older release.

[Anita]

@Riccardo, thanks for your reply! We would like to better understand your workflow and have a few follow-up questions:

• What are the main challenges that you are encountering with uiexportdlg?
• The uiexportdlg dialog is used to export immediately after configuring the export settings. How does configuring export settings and exporting the figure each fit in your workflow? For example, how often do you find yourself reusing export configurations across different figures or MATLAB sessions?
• Could you please share more about your preference for setting properties like font style and size through the export dialog, instead of directly on the figure?

We really appreciate you sharing your use case.

[Vamsi]

"but it’s not possible to save and load different export styles"

This ability to load differnt export styles and use them makes life easy in many ways. I usually increase the line width to 2 points for the whole graph with a sinlge click. Removing this functionality requires too much clicks/steps to get the same output.

Getting back this functionality will be helpful !!

[dpb]

@Anita -- "This change was made to simplify the export dialog interface..."

Yes, at the loss of a great deal of functionality and increased effort to accomplish the same thing.

From the linked-to release notes--

"If you call exportsetupdlg, MATLAB issues a warning and runs the new uiexportdlg (R2025a) function instead.

To simplify the interfaces, the new dialog boxes do not include options for customizing fonts, line width, or tick values, or for setting the renderer. To control the appearance of a figure that you want to print or export, set properties of the figure and the objects in the figure before opening the dialog box."

That's just rude, indeed! This is the first time I've ever seen Mathworks actually break continued usage of a feature being deprecated on its first introduction.

As the folks here have told you, the facility to change virtually everything in the one place and more particularly, to have figure properties designed and saved for specific targets that can simpy be recalled and used is such an obvious benefit for anybody whose work involves writing for more than simply one-off throwaway applications it boggles the mind that anybody would think removing that facility was progress.

See https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/2181610-export-setup-style-replacement#question_2181610 for yet another with similar workflow and valid reasons for maintaining the previous tool (or at least all of its features). "Simplifying" implies Mathworks knows better than their users what they should or should not be doing; the level of sophistication of users should never be underestimated. How many style guides do you suppose are in existence that MATLAB users are working under?

[Anita]

Thank you for your feedback. We acknowledge this limitation and have shared your feedback with the development team for future consideration.

[Russell Carpenter]

Just piling on here - this is a really bad change you all have made, without any warning, and without any transition period. Loading different export styles with one click, changing line widths and font sizes for the entire figure, was an indispensibly useful feature. Please bring it back!

[Adelle]

Yes, please bring the scaling (and other) features back.

[Matthew]

Please bring back the export styles! Even better if they can be applied programatically instead of using a UI.

[Robert Watson]

Yeah, while somewhat complex, it was extremely useful to have a standard formatting profile I could apply to a figure to generate output of a consistent style suitable for inclusion in publications.

Having to do this manually every time I update the figure introduces a Iot of additional risk for human error or inconsistency, and significantly increases the length of time this task takes (>10x) for each revision of a figure.

Please bring back the ability to set and quickly apply multiple format profiles!

[dpb]

"Having to do this manually every time I update the figure..."

It's a functionality I never used having been past the point of writing for journals or meetings for some time before it was introduced, but surely would have been useful indeed to avoid "the Harridan of Hopwood" back when to put the thesis on the required mats with the IBM Selectric and Calcomp pen plotter was the advanced way. <g>

Anyways, if still have the old release available, would it also output code to make the given changes by any chance? If that were so, one could retrieve the saved templates into m-files. Failing that, one could build a library of m-files (or one file with a selection input variable and SWITCH contsruct) to replace the saved functionality. Better than redoing over and over but the shortsightedness of the new UI to not incorporate the ability is hard to fathom.

[Anita]

Thanks for sharing your feedback. We’ll continue to monitor the thread and take these use cases into consideration.

[dpb]

@Anita -- it comes to mind an alternate implementation would be to have named default properties mappings for figures/axes in a settings library. It kinda' exists now in that one could again build m-files that contain the particular combinations, but afaik there's no formal tool/interface for such.

Again, once having had the facility to change virtually everything in the one place without having to do things piecemeal, it's understandable the folks with these kinds of uses miss it.

Even when I was still "just one-man consulting" the amount of time in cleaning up the default graphics to be presentable even for single clients was generally more effort than the whole of the work to do the analysis.

Answer 2

[Vidip]

I understand that you used the Export Setup dialog box in MATLAB 2024b to modify properties of a figure before exporting.

The below MATLAB Answer discusses a similar issue. Please refer to it and see if it provides any helpful insights:

• https://in.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/2177790-after-completing-the-drawing-in-matlab-2025a-there-is-no-export-preset-option-in-the-2024-version-w