Skip to content

Editing the Family Tree

The Ancestor Tree view offers a quick way to build and extend the structure of your family tree directly from the chart, without leaving the tree view.

Note

Tree editing is available in the Ancestor Tree, Descendant Tree, Hourglass Graph, and Relationship Graph tabs. It is not available in the Fan Chart. Only users with the Editor role or above can use it.

Entering and exiting edit mode

Users with edit permissions see a floating pencil button (bottom right) on supported chart pages. Click it to enter edit mode – or press the e keyboard shortcut. The app bar will show an edit mode indicator.

Each change (adding or linking a person) is saved to the database immediately when confirmed in the dialog. To exit edit mode, click the close button in the app bar, or switch to a different chart tab.

Note

Switching chart tabs automatically exits edit mode.

Adding a family member

In edit mode, each person card in the chart shows a small + button. Clicking it opens the Add Family Member dialog for that person, with one or two icons for each available relationship:

  • Father – only shown if the person has no father yet in their primary parent family
  • Mother – only shown if the person has no mother yet in their primary parent family
  • Child
  • Spouse

Each relationship offers two options side by side:

  • Link icon – connect an existing person already in the database
  • + icon – create a brand new person

Linking an existing person

Choose the link icon and search for the person by name. Select them from the results to create the family link.

For a child, you can also set the relationship type to father and mother (Birth, Adopted, Stepchild, etc.).

For a spouse, you can set the family relationship type (Married, Civil Union, Unknown, etc.).

Creating a new person

Choose the + icon to open a minimal creation form. The fields available are:

  • Name (given name and surname)
  • Gender (Unknown, Male, Female, Other)
  • Birth date and place
  • Death date and place

The new person is saved and immediately linked to the selected person in the chart.

Limitations

The tree edit view is for quickly building the skeleton of a family tree. Use the person's detail page for anything beyond the basics: citations, notes, media, attributes, alternate names, existing event details, multiple parent families (only the primary family is accessible here), and managing multiple spouses.

Use Person Details (the account card icon in the toolbar) to jump directly to the full edit view of the currently centred person.