I have an issue when clicking the Descendants from Family or Pedigree view. Here is the situation. This feature works fine if one clicks let’s say Father then back to Family view. Move back in time to Grandfather and reclick Descendants and back to Family view. Now go to Great Grandfather and reclick Descendants. Grandfather’s descendants are listed. But let’s go back to Family view and pick Grandfather or one of his siblings and now click Descendants. Great Grandfather remains as number 1 in the list. The new person picked as I come forward in time does not refresh making this new person number 1 in the list. I am pretty sure this worked in version 10 and in earlier versions 11. I can have the younger generation person highlighted or even open the edit screen and some marker is not being cleared that allows the highlighted person to be number 1. Anyone else have this issue of who you want as number 1 person in Descendants not happening?
The scenario you describe also occurs on mac. The granduncle is not in position 1 of the descendants view, however they are highlighted as the focus person and their descendants are on the screen. If you want the highlighted person to be #1, you can right-click and select “Position / Move to primary position”. “Move to primary position” is also under Edit on the menu list of the Descendants view.
I just checked and RM10 worked the same way.
The best I can tell (and I could be wrong), the behavior you are describing began with RM8 and has been there ever since through all versions of RM9, RM10, and RM11. It literally is a feature rather than a bug, and I personally find it to be a most unwelcome feature.
I have never been able to figure out all the rules by which this particular feature supposed to work. if I remember correctly, the philosophical underpinnings of this feature are that if you switch from view X to view Y, then RM tries to put view Y back the way it most recently looked if possible. This was presented as a great new feature in RM8 as compared to RM7. The “if possible” condition seems to include that the person currently with the focus in view X must have been visible somewhere in view Y at a previous tine.
There is a great deal of guesswork in my analysis because every time I think I have figured out how it works, I run into a situation where it doesn’t seem to work the way I thought it did. It’s possible I have never really figured out how this feature is supposed to work. It’s also possible that they way this feature worked in RM8 has been tweaked a bit since RM8 and that it doesn’t work exactly the same way in RM11 as it did in RM7. All I know for sure is that even after all this time between RM8 and RM11, I still find this feature to be most unwelcome, and I very much prefer the behavior from RM7 where the person with the current focus always went into the primary position of the new view when I switched views.
That being said, I have a couple of caveats.
- The primary position for Family View is the parents’ position. If a person has no spouse are children, then they cannot go into the parents’ position and instead need to placed into a child’s position. To me, that is no big deal and is the way it has to work. This particular situation simply has to be an exception.
- The primary position for Pedigree View is the leftmost position. For the most part, that’s what I want and need. The new feature starting with RM8 sometimes puts the focus person in the primary position when I switch to Pedigree View and sometimes puts the focus person one generation further to the right. I never know which it’s going to do, which drives me crazy. I do have to admit that sometimes this behavior is welcome, and most of the time it is not. The trouble is, have no control over it. What would make me really happy for Pedigree view would be an option to choose which behavior I want. The option should be very visible and easy to change, just like the option to change the number of generations displayed in Descendant View. When I have raised this wish, it has been turned down because a person without a spouse or child would have to go into the left most position of Pedigree View even if the option were set the other way. My answer is, so what? That’s exactly the same situation as a person with no spouse or child in Family View. And the exact same common sense solution could apply to Pedigree View as well
If you want to move the descendant to the primary position right click and select Position, Move to Primary Position.
Thank you. I was unaware of the “move” feature. I know I sure didn’t want to foul up my numbering system of who is the root person. I am happy now.
Thank you. That definitely works and was feature I had not ever used before.
That’s interesting. I have used the “right click and move the descendant to the primary position” tool for years. And still, I am still profoundly unhappy after all these years with the new behavior that first appeared in RM8 where the focus person doesn’t go into the primary position of a new view.
That being said, let me point out one more neat feature in Descendant View that can be used to move people around in the view. Namely, there are chevrons that you can click to move people “up” and “down” to a different generation in the view. The direction the person moves depends on the direction the chevron is pointing.
You can also see that I have Descendant View set to 2 generations. I usually set it to either 2 generations and sometimes as many as 3. I find the value of Descendant View usually degrades for me with more generations than that. With too many generations, I find there is just too much clutter and the data I want to see is just too hard to see. On occasion, I do set it to more generations, sometimes all the way to the maximum of 7. But that’s unusual for me. I’m a sample size of one and your mileage may vary.
Well, I was playing with this a little more. I usually set Descendant View to 2 generations, and sometimes to 3. I hadn’t noticed a difference in behavior between the two views that make no sense to me. Here is the 2 generation view. The chevron for Nettie Peters can be used to place her into the primary position.
But at 3 generations, Nettie Peters does not have a chevron at all. I do understand that the purpose of the chevrons is more “up” and “down” than it is to “put somebody in the primary position”. But why do the chevrons disappear for the direct descendants when the view goes to 3 generations? This makes no sense to me.
Hey Jerry Think I understand but NOT sure I can explain it very well…
In 2 generations all you see are the parents and kids— so everybody will have a chevron UNLESS the child died or never married or you don’t have any info for parents of your Mom as shown in this example..
When you move to the 3rd generation, you now see the person’s spouse and kids-- the person’s kids will have a chevron if they married, the person’s hubby will have a chevron if you entered any parents for him and the person’s parents will have a chevron if you have listed any parents for them-- so the original kids Sis, Jack and Bob in my example will NOT have chevrons as all their info is on the screen–so no where else to go for them… if that make sense…
So the only way you can get them in the primary position is to click on one of their kids…
I agree with your analysis of the way it works. I question the “why” of it working that way. It doesn’t make much sense to me.
The chevrons are not so much to move someone to a primary position. It’s to move to ancestor or descendant lines that are not showing, moving up and down generations not yet visible.