Resetting arcpy.mapping text element

Question

I am writing a script to create thousands of maps and I am trying to create a table that updates for every map. Basically an updating table of the information specific to each map. I have been trying to link a an excel table to the layout view but arc does not seem to have that functionality. So what I am doing instead is creating a manual table in the layout view. I have 27 values for each map that I have been storing in a dictionary (using search cursors to extract the info and store into dictionary).
I cannot copy and paste my table into here but it essentially looks this:
Receptors               AEGbuffer    CONbuffer    ERGbuffer
buffer                   1            10           19
schools                  2            11           20 
childcares               3            12           21
hospitals                4            13           22
nursinghomes             5            14           23
critical                 6            15           24
sw                       7            16           25
streams                  8            17           26
respop                   9            18           27

for k,v in sorted(table.items()):
    for elm in arcpy.mapping.ListLayoutElements(mxd, "TEXT_ELEMENT"):
        if elm.text == "1":  
            if k == 'AEGbuffer': elm.text= v
        if elm.text == "2":
            if k == 'AEGschools': elm.text = v
        if elm.text == "3":
            if k == 'AEGchildcares': elm.text = v
        if elm.text == "4":
            if k == 'AEGhospitals': elm.text = v
        if elm.text == "5":
            if k == 'AEGnursinghomes': elm.text = v
        if elm.text == "6":
            if k == 'AEGcritical': elm.text = v
        if elm.text == "7":
            if k == 'AEGsw': elm.text = v
        if elm.text == "8":
            if k == 'AEGstreams': elm.text = v
        if elm.text == "9":
            if k == 'AEGrespop': elm.text = v

this is just for the first row, the rest of the code is the same process for the pasting of the dictionary values.
where I am stuck: I do not know how to properly reset the newly changed values to their original 1-27 values so the next map can be easily produced. is there a tool or trick to this?
what I have tried: after I export the map I reopen the text elements and reverse the process like..
for k,v in sorted(table.items()):
    for elm in arcpy.mapping.ListLayoutElements(mxd, "TEXT_ELEMENT"):
         if k == 'AEGbuffer':
             if elm.text == v: elm.text = "1"
             and so on......

but this approach hasn't worked great. a few of the values are wrong when there are the same values a few times on the table.

Ryan · Accepted Answer

Instead of setting the text contents of each element set their name to something like "Text1" or even better you could make the element names match up with the key names in your table like 'AEGbuffer'. If it were me I would also add a suffix to the fields so i can make sure I am operating only on the table elements. You might come back later and add text elements that you don't want to include in your table loop.

Then your giant loop could look like this

for table_elm in arcpy.mapping.ListLayoutElements(mxd, "TEXT_ELEMENT", "*_table"):
     if text_elm.name == k:
          text_elm.text = v

To reset you just

for table_elm in arcpy.mapping.ListLayoutElements(mxd, "TEXT_ELEMENT", "*_table"):
    table_elm.text = ""

EDIT: Based on your comments I think your real problem is your data format.

{'hospitals':{'AEGBuffer': 'None','ConBuffer': '65,200', 'ERGBuffer': 'None'}, 'schools':{'AEGBuffer': '600','ConBuffer': '7,300', 'ERGBuffer': '550'},'respop':{}}

lets you do:

#your k is now going to be the row name, i.e. hospitals and v is going to be another dictionary
for k,v in sorted(table.items()): 
    #this relies on elements being named hospitalERGBuffer, schoolCONBuffer etc.
    for bufferType, bufferValue in v.items():
        fieldName = str(k + bufferType) # i.e. 'hospitalsERGBuffer'
        table_elm = arcpy.mapping.ListLayoutElements(mxd, "TEXT_ELEMENT", fieldName + "*")[0] #there's only going to be one if you've done this right.
            table_elm.text = bufferValue

ziggy · Answer

i have figured out a neat trick when trying to reset text elements. If you put your mxd path inside the loop you are going through you do not need to write code to reset your text elements

first way that you must manually reset:

mxd = "path"
for lay in fc:
   ##extract info for map
    for x in text_elements:
        if x == "word": x = "number"
    arcpy.export_pdf("map")
    for x in for x in text_elements:
        if x == "number": x = "word"

but you do not need to reset the text elements if you put the mxd path inside your main loop!

for lay in fc:
    mxd = "path"
   ##extract info for map
    for x in text_elements:
        if x == "word": x = "number"

Resetting arcpy.mapping text element

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