Family Historian User Group

When I first create an All Relatives Diagram, spouse boxes appear for spouses who were not ancestors of the diagram root. This is what I would expect for ancestors who were married more than once.
However, according to the help instructions, these boxes appear only when the Spouse Display Option is "Spouses in Own Boxes", but this is not what I see. I have tried all three possible values of the Spouse Display Option, but the boxes stubbornly sit there in my diagram - and as you can probably guess, this is not what I want.
Any idea what I am doing wrong?
Thank you
Alyn

Yes Alyn, that does seem wrong.
The Spouse boxes in question are all the beige background boxes attached to green Ancestor or straw Descendant boxes.
The Help for Box Types says

Spouse boxes only appear when the Spouse Display Option is Spouses in Own Boxes (see the General tab of the Diagram Options dialog). The ‘spouses’ in question are spouses of Descendants and (in the All Relatives tree only) non-ancestral spouses of Ancestors (your grandmother is your grandfather’s spouse, but her details are displayed in an Ancestor box, not a Spouse box; but if your grandfather had other spouses, they would be displayed in Spouse boxes).

So the Spouse display options should impact all those Spouse boxes, but only affects Descendant spouses.
The Help for that General tab says they are Not applicable to the Ancestors tree but says nothing about the All Relatives tree ancestor boxes.

To eliminate those Ancestral beige Spouse boxes, right-click them and choose Hide, but their details will be completely invisible.

Try reporting the problem to Calico Pie and see what they say

Where an ancestor has multiple spouses you will see spouses in their own boxes on an All relatives diagram, so that children if they exist can be shown (as they would be at least Step relations).

Jane, if they are children of the ancestor and the ancestor's second spouse they will be shown, but they are 'half' relations, not 'step' relations. But I agree, I think this is the reason the extra spouses have their own box - otherwise it would not be possible to show which children were descended from which spouse.

Any children of the second spouse by another partner are 'step' relations, but they will not be shown in the All Relatives diagram.

Thanks Mike,
It's really helpful to have someone confirm that I've read the help correctly. I've raised a ticket with Calico Pie and I'll see what they say.
Alyn

Sorry Jane & Lorna, but those arguments about how to show children could be equally applied to Descendant Spouses, but FH manages quite happily by issuing the children from the middle of the combined straw Descendant box, and if necessary issuing children from the middle of a linked pink Remarriage box.

So for Ancestral Spouses the additional beige Spouse box could be combined with the green Ancestor box with children issuing from that box, and any further spouses could use a pink Remarriage box with children issuing from that.

However, I bet Calico Pie will duck the issue saying they will look into it, and probably just alter the Help.

After a bit of experimentation, I've concluded that whatever FH does to the formatting of these boxes depends upon whether they are above the root (ancestors and their siblings, cousins etc) or below (descendants - whose siblings are also descendants). Below the root, each branch behaves just like a descendants diagram, where all the Spouse Display Options work as described.
But it was above the root that I noticed the problem in the first place, and I suppose the behaviour is different because the the algorithm that identifies relatives is necessarily different on the way up than on the way down.

Ah, well, Calico Pie have said they'll look at the Help, as Mike predicted.

Thank everyone for your help.
Alyn

Alyn, you are nearly correct.
It is not whether they are above or below the Diagram Root, but whether they are the Spouse of an Ancestor (green box) or of a Descendant (straw box).

Note that in an All Relatives Diagram the Ancestor boxes can have Descendant sub-branches for such as cousins.
Those are above the Diagram Root but any Spouse of such a Descendant (straw box) will still honour the option.

Remember you can still Hide those Ancestral Spouses as I explained earlier.