Family Historian User Group

I cannot seem to find an answer to this little problem, so some guidance would be most helpful.

In this example I have set the marriage status to Unmarried Couple (I have also tried Never Married and dotted line still does not appear.) However, in the diagrams the connecting line is still solid even though the line property is set to dotted. You can see that the divorce has the crossed out line as expected. I have tried changing options in the Print tab of this dialogue to no effect. What ever I try I cannot get dotted lines to appear in diagrams, have I missed something simple? Any help will be appreciated.

I have discovered that the dotted line (really dashed rather than dotted) is working but not in the situation I wanted. If I have this Never Married relationship in the middle of the diagram with sufficient vertical separation it can be seen. The question now is how can I show Never/Unmarried Couples in the left hand vertical column of these diagrams? I am guessing that the answer is you cannot unless you add something manually to the diagram?

Also, the dotted line does not appear in the right hand vertical column unless there is a forced additional vertical separation between the two people. Even selecting Very Short Dots in the Print tab of the diagram property dialogue for the chart has no effect on the vertical link, as per this example when all three relationships were never married. I do not want to force too great a vertical separation otherwise these diagrams will not fit neatly on a single page of A4 in my family history books.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

A more correct description of what you call the "left hand column" is Ancestor Boxes that by default have a green background.
Apart from the 1st generation row/column, those by default use Fork Style connectors.
That is governed by Diagram > Options > General tab Use Fork Style for Lines Connecting Ancestors lower left.
Untick that option and the marriage parallel lines will be used as elsewhere.

Have you reduced the Diagram > Options > Dimensions tab Between spouses (minimum) to less than the default 0.15"?
Have you increased the Diagram > Options > Lines tab Normal Lines Connecting Relatives to more than the default 1pt?
With those default settings the Never/Unmarried Couples dotted lines are quite clear in my Diagrams, but with a smaller gap or larger point size they become progressively less obvious as you have shown.

So the first thing to try is Installation Settings for those two tabs, and adjust until you find a suitable compromise setting.
(The other settings you have tried adjusting do not affect those marriage parallel lines.)

If that is not possible, then another option is to conditionally adjust the Box Style for those Marriage Status cases.
In the Diagram > Options > Boxes tab use <<Add Condition > Expression and enter an Expression such as:
=IsTrue(%CUR~FAMS>_STAT% = "Unmarried Couple")
or
=IsTrue((%CUR~FAMS>_STAT% = "Unmarried Couple") or (%CUR~FAMS>_STAT% = "Never Married"))

and in Edit Features set Box Line to Dotted or choose a different colour.
(This will also work for Ancestors with Fork Style connectors.)

Mike,

I knew I must be missing something fairly obvious. Un-ticking Fork Style for ancestors did the trick. Also I had reduced to gap to 0.1" to fit onto a page, I have increased that to .2" and I get exactly what I wanted.

Thank you for the very helpful tips.