* Married 3x...wrong spouse is listed in couple's box

[patriciaann]

Trying to produce a chart for a family reunion. Several cousins had multiple spouses. One had 3 spouses. The current spouse is not the one that shows up in the box when I select one box per marriage. How can I get the current spouse to be the one in the box? My cousin's won't like seeing their current spouse off to the side and the one's they were divorced from in the box with them.
Thanks

[tatewise]

The Spouse that shares an Individual's box is their "last" Spouse in the FH database, but is not necessarily associated with their latest Marriage. It depends on the order the data was entered. Such database versus chronology sequencing issues can arise with other events too, such as the order Children are shown in Diagrams.

As an example, examine the Property Box of the Cousin with three Spouses. What order are their names shown on the Spouse tabs at the bottom? The last one on the right is the one that shares the Cousin's box, but I would bet that is not their current Spouse.

The cure for that particular instance is to use the up/down arrows to the right of the Spouse tab to adjust the order of the tabs. There are similar up/down arrows in other dialogues.

The global cure is to use the command Tools > Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data and simply OK all the defaults offered. This will automatically re-order those Spouse tabs and any other out-of-sequence data into chronological Date order.

Then the next time the Diagram is created the latest Spouse will share the Cousin's box.

The above dynamics illustrates some customisation options in FH. If you want a particular Spouse to share an Individual's box, then you can manually adjust the tabs to get that effect.

Having said all that, the usual default is to put each Spouse in their own box so that their Birth, Death, or other events are shown independantly.

[patriciaann]

Thank You Mike, for the instructions on how to reorder spouses so that the current one shows...
Armed with your help, I'll be working on fixing this, today.
Thanks again,
Patricia Ann

[patriciaann]

Hi Mike,
I'm afraid I still can't get this to work. I''ve tried using the arrows, re-ordering the out of sequence data. Opening and closing the tree...but the wrong spouse is still coming in the property box. On my cousin, Mary, I'm getting her first spouse in the one box per marriage, not her second, current husband.
Don't know what to do to fix this.
Thanks for your help.
Patricia Ann

[tatewise]

If you inspect cousin Mary's Property Box in what order are her husband's names shown on the Spouse tab?

It is possible I have got the rules wrong for choosing the spouse to share the diagram box, so will look at it again.

As a matter of interest why are you so keen on one box per marriage?

[jimlad68]

PA, I get what you get, even after a refresh re-order. I suspect that is the way it is supposed to be. I think it would look strange if the latest spouse was listed first. If you put spouses in own box, neither spouse gets preference and keeps a logical order. However, if you want to have the latest spouse first I can see the only way round to do something like; swap the marriage dates, reorder, then swap the marriage dates back without a reorder.

[tatewise]

Yes, on re-investigation the rules are quite complex.
Although the default preference is the 1st Spouse, which Spouse is actually shared with an Individual depends on the box type (green Ancestor or straw Descendant) and whether there are any Children, and can result in none being shared.

Rather than adjusting the Marriage Date, simply use the arrows to alter the Spouse order temporarily while the Diagram is being produced.

As a matter of interest why are you so keen on one box per marriage?

[patriciaann]

Thanks Jim and Mike for your input on how to reorder spouses.

The reason I am interested in one spouse per box is I have to produce a family tree for a reunion. I'm trying to have it not be so huge. The tree is showing all the ancestors and descendants of my great grandparents. Each of them had 9 children, and following them were large families all the way down. Putting the main descendants in one marriage per box helps to consolidate the tree into a size that won't need to wrap around the house.