I have one main tree that contains both my birth family and my adopted family each connected to me through my birth or adopted parents. In RM7, from my person page I could click on one or the other set of parents and the focus of the information would reflect the family I wanted to study, i.e. if I was in the pedigree mode, when I switched from my adopted parents to my birth parents, the pedigree changed to show my pedigree lines in relation to my birth parents lines. All I had to do was double click on that set of parents and the focus automatically changed. I can’t seem to figure out how to do the in RM8.
If you click on “Parents” in the people side view panel, does that work?
Getting spouses together for a report or for Pedigree View or for Family View has been much discussed. None of the ways to accomplish this task in RM7 seem to work reliably in RM8. Instead, the RM8 way to do it is to display the couple together in Couple View and then to switch back to other views.
I don’t think getting a child together with the correct set of parents has yet been discussed. There are several ways to accomplish this task in RM7, and I did get one of them to work reliably. Namely I picked the correct set of parents in Couple VIew and put them into Family View. I highlighted the child of interest. Then I switched Pedigree View. This seems to work to get either set of parents to be the “current” parents. There may be some other solution as well, but that’s the only one I have found s far.
No. That changes the screen to the parent that I selected and show that parent’s pedigree line, but it does not connect me to that parent so that I can run, for instance, relationship reports between myself and a particular individual in that line through that line.
This also will not work. I am assuming that fathers and mothers only appear in the Couple list if they have a marriage event. In this instance with my birth mother and father there was no marriage so they don’t appear in that list.
Unmarried couples do appear in the Couple list. An actual marriage fact is not required.
Thanks. I guess I need to determine why someone is not showing up in my couples list. What have I entered incorrectly.
You have to have them entered as “spouses” in RM. The term “spouses” is controversial in this context in RM because it does not imply a marriage. Only an actual marriage fact implies a marriage.
One way to get two people entered into RM as “spouses” without a marriage fact is literally to highlight one of them and to do an Add Spouse operation for the other. Another way is to add both of them as parents for the same child. But they have to be parents for the same child in the same family. From your description, it sounds like you have already done one or the other of the two things. If you have, they will be in the Couple list.
I have been enlightened. 
However, circling back to my original question, I guess the answer is that what I did so simply in RM7 will now take additional steps to achieve the same goal, if it can be achieved at all. I suppose I should now start thinking about separating my birth and adopted lines into separate entities. 
I would recommend keeping your birth and adopted line in the same database. I agree that RM8 doesn’t support setting the “current” parents quite as gracefully as RM7. But most users who separate their lines into separate databases later regret it.
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This solution worked for me, yes I had the same problem.
A late reply, but I have just begun using RM8 and the solution to this is important to me as I have an individual with two extensive family trees; birth (no father)) and adoption (both parents).
I could not work out how to switch until I read this complete thread.
I am not adding anything new but I think it would be useful to summarise what works for me.
First select your individual in any of the individual views: Pedigree, Family, Descendants, People List. This brings up the sidebar with the tab bar shown in mapleleaf’s post. Choosing the parents tab gives the list of families. Simple select one of the parents in one of the families. This will put that parent into focus in whichever view you are using, and establishes the family as the current family. In cases where you have the same individual in both families select them in the family that you want to bring into focus.
You now need to reselect the original individual. The simplest way to do that is to click the left < in the tab view bar.
David
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