* Stepchldren in charts

[jackindy]

Is there a chart that will allow me to show the family structure in the attached screenshot? I have tried the All Relatives Chart and tried to get help from FH Support. I could never understand how to get the right boxes hidden in the chart and they told me to ask here. I am willing to re-enter the persons in whatever manner necessary to produce the results I want. I have several families who want to be shown like this.

[tatewise]

What is the closest to what you would like that you have achieved so far?

See Illegitimate Child - 'Unknown' spouse of mother. (14185) that describes the same scenario, identifies a Wish List entry you can Vote for and links to some related topics.

It is easy to create a similar diagram where the unknown partner appears in the diagram as an empty box to the right of the Wife box and connected by dotted double lines. To get dotted lines set the Status of the partnership to Never Married or Unmarried Couple. The unknown partner box can be customised to be small and transparent as shown below but is extremely difficult to hide completely and move the child link to the Wife box.

Diagram.png (7.31 KiB) Viewed 805 times

[jackindy]

This is the closest I can get to what I want. When I try to not have SCOTT show, then the child also disappears.

[tatewise]

But that is a significantly different family structure to the one you posted originally.
Also, here you talk about hiding the SCOTT parent box rather than the blank 'unknown' partner box to the right.
So I'm getting confused about exactly what family structure you are trying to handle and which people you want to hide.

It is certainly true that if you hide a parent box then all of their children get hidden too.

[LornaCraig]

It is certainly true that if you hide a parent box then all of their children get hidden too.

Actually that's not quite true. When you hide the box for a second partner their children also get hidden, although when you hide the box for a first partner their children are not hidden. This was discussed in a topic here in recent months, but I can’t now find that topic. I think it was reported to CP at the time, as it seems to be a bug.

Anyway, if you switch the order of the wife’s partners, so that unknown partner (or Scott) is the wife’s first partner, you will discover that it is possible to hide him and still have the child shown. (To switch the order, go to the wife’s Property Box, main tab, and in the Spouse section use the small black up/down arrows to the right of the spouse name tabs.) You will then be able to get the unknown partner hidden and his child still visible, like this:

diagram.JPG (21.09 KiB) Viewed 780 times

[jackindy]

Thanks for all suggestions. I will spend some time tonight playing and hopefully have more coherent questions in the morning.

The screenshot I posted was the result of my playing around and does not show the family structure I want. SCOTT is the unknown biological father that I do NOT want to show, but I do not know how to not have him show. I do not know why there is an unknown box to the right of SCOTT.

The child or interest is shown twice (as you can see from the birth dates).

[LornaCraig]

Yes, your diagram shows that the child of interest has been linked twice, and that you have created a total of three partners for the wife. And there is even an expansion button below the line linking to the third partner, so the third partner also has a child or children.

You said originally "I am willing to re-enter the persons in whatever manner necessary..." so I suggest you start by re-entering them from scratch, taking care to create just two partners for the wife (a husband and the 'unknown' partner) and link the child of interest only once, to the mother and the unkown partner. By making the 'unknown' partner the first partner you should then be able to produce the layout shown in my earlier screenshot.

[jackindy]

Your suggestions worked! Thanks so much.
I used the Move Control Box to change the order of the spouses; that way I didn’t have to make the change in my tree.
I further explored how to do a “yours, mine, and ours” scenario, with a stepchild from both the husband and the wife. The only way I could do it was to Insert into Diagram a descendant tree with one person in it, the child, and then draw a line from the parent to the child. Is there a way to make a connecting link between the parent box and the child box which will remain attached to both even as other changes are made to the chart?

[LornaCraig]

..... Is there a way to make a connecting link between the parent box and the child box which will remain attached to both even as other changes are made to the chart?

No, unfortunately not. Both the trees (the main one and the single box tree) are dynamic so both have to be able to shift if additonal changes are made.

[tatewise]

Firstly, I had to experiment several times to achieve Lorna's trick of hiding the unknown partner and retaining the child.
The only way I could get it to work is when the unknown partner is the first partner and only the Wife is the Diagram Root.
If anybody else or the couple is chosen as the Diagram Root then it does not work, so in general that is not a solution.

A slight variant of insert into diagram with a box and line is to use Insert into Diagram > Ancestor Tree with the child as Root Person and 2 Generations up which includes a line to the Wife.
Reduce the size of the Wife box so that this subtree can be moved with the small Wife box over the original Wife box.
Then use Diagram > Order & Grouping > Send to Back to move the subtree behind the original tree.
Save the Diagram as a Family Historian Chart to preserve the complex structure.
The subtree(s) may still need to be moved from time to time to align them with the main tree but at least it is only one item and not two.

What I don't entirely understand is why you need to hide an empty box.
If the other parent is unknown then there is <no spouse> recorded and the diagram box will always be empty.
Hiding the box and adjusting the lines does not conceal the fact that the unknown father existed.
So why not simply keep the empty box?

If that other parent is known and a record with details exists, but you want to exclude those details from the box, then another method can be used to hide all the text to produce the empty box by using a Record Flag such as Private and making the Text Scheme text conditional on the flag.

[LornaCraig]

Mike, FYI I have now found the topic where we touched on this issue previously.
The topic starts about something else, but the issue of hiding spouses without hiding their children comes in towards the end of the discussion.
Saving Customised Blank Diagrams (21216)

[jackindy]

Thanks again for more suggestions to play with.

In the meantime, let me address one question about why I want to hide an empty box.

I am preparing trees to be printed and displayed at family reunion. Families have various ways they want their families displayed publicly and I try to accommodate them, when I can. The data remains as entered into my tree and I am comfortable with these public accommodations.

[tatewise]

Mike, FYI I have now found the topic where we touched on this issue previously.
The topic starts about something else, but the issue of hiding spouses without hiding their children comes in towards the end of the discussion.
Saving Customised Blank Diagrams (21216)

That seems to be focused on Descendant Diagrams and not All Relatives Diagrams as required in this thread.
I still maintain that your example of hiding the first partner only works when the WIFE is the Diagram Root.
That is unlikely to be suitable, especially if several such families need hidden partners as the OP requests.

Jack, I am still unclear about why they are uncomfortable with blank boxes. Hiding the box does not hide their existence.

[LornaCraig]

The OP said “Is there a chart that will allow me to show the family structure in the attached screenshot? I have tried the All Relatives Chart…” but didn’t say it had to be an All Relatives chart. The subsequent screenshots showed only the parents and children, as in a Descendants chart, so I assumed that was all that was needed. In fact it may still be all that is needed, if each family group is having a separate tree created for display.

I didn’t suggested that my solution works in a wider variety of cases (I agree that it doesn’t), just that it meets the original request, as it was phrased.

I am still unclear about why they are uncomfortable with blank boxes. Hiding the box does not hide their existence.

It's not our place to speculate. The OP is, quite rightly, trying to accommodate people's personal requests.