Family Historian User Group

Hi,

I would like my marriages on charts and in Family group sheets to start with the first marriage, not the last - can you help please?

Thank you. Lesley

Hi Lesley, it all hinges on the order you have those married Spouses recorded in your Project.

Get them into the desired order in the Focus Window and the Spouse section of the Property Box and all will be OK.

Assuming all those Marriage Events have a Date recorded against them, then just auto-sort them into order.
See how_to:sorting_children|> Sorting Children & Spouses into Order for various techniques that also cater for when you don't know the Marriage Date.

Unfortunately there are some constraints in certain types of diagram, even when you have the spouses entered chronologically. Assuming you are using top-down diagrams, in an All Relatives diagram any ancestor couples of the diagram root person will always be displayed with the male on the left, female on the right. The male's own ancestors and other relatives are then shown above and beside him on the left and the female's relatives above and beside her on the right. This means that if the male ancestor had a second (non-ancestral) wife, that second wife has to be displayed on the left of him, but will have a small number 2 beside her box. (If she was displayed right of the first wife she would potentially be in the way of other relatives of the first wife.)

However this constraint only applies to couples who are ancestors of the diagram root. In other cases you should be able to achieve what you want by experimenting with Diagram>Options>General tab and setting the Spouse layout options to either 2nd spouse on the right or All spouses on the right.

Lorna, I'm not sure that is problem, because Lesley says the Family Group Sheet is also in the wrong order.

Mike, yes that should be fixed if the spouses are arranged in the correct order. But Lesley also mentions 'charts' and I wanted to explain that even after re-ordering the spouses there may be some circumstances in which they will not be displayed in chronological order in diagrams.

Thank you everyone for very quick replies as usual. I will print out your replies and have a go at correcting this. many thanks again. Lesley.

Thank you for your help. However I could not do those changes. I have searched in Family Historian Help and found that I should do the following

Enter - marriages in wrong order -

Select the record of the person and clicking Edit - re-order events by date.

It has worked. Thank you for all your help - it made me look a little harder. Lesley

Still Puzzled Mike!
Can you please explain exactly what did not work from how_to:sorting_children|> Sorting Children & Spouses into Order so it can be improved for the benefit of others, which is how the FHUG thrives.

Did you try 1st suggestion Tools > Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data?

Did you try 2nd suggestion of selecting Individual and pressing F9 key which is same as Edit > Re-order Events by Date... F9?

Did you try 3rd suggestion of Property Box cog Menu > Sort Family and Events in Date Order?

I realise you are using V5 and not V6 but I thought they behaved the same regarding those commands.

The command you chose only re-orders one family, so if there are other Marriages out of sequence then it will need repeating whereas Tools > Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data corrects them all in one go.

Hi Mike

I am an idiot! I printed off the instructions and therefore didnot realise that there were links there! I have looked at the links and of course they would have worked. So sorry. Other users just follow Mike's links.

Lesley

Mike

My Data is now all in the correct order. Thank you again. Lesley

Lesley, I'm glad that is all sorted (sic) OK.

I know you have been using FH for a while, but you may find it worthwhile working through the topics in how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers but just be aware that a few features may only apply to FH V6.