Family Tree Display
Why does my family tree and show my direct descendants? I have added all my uncles and aunties but my tree only shows my father. Can you not display your family tree showing all your relatives? Thanks
Answers
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There are four different tree views available on FamilySearch: landscape, portrait, fan, and descendancy. Of these, the portrait and fan views only show direct ancestors of the person that the tree is currently centered on. The landscape view can show all of the children of a couple, but only for one couple at a time.
The view that shows aunts and uncles and cousins is the descendancy chart, but if it's centered on you (as it usually is, to start), then it will only show you and your children (if you've entered them). You'll need to click "Expand" at the top of the chart and choose an ancestor to see the descendants of that branch. You can expand a branch by clicking the >-in-a-circle, and you can collapse a branch by clicking the v-in-a-circle.
However, I find that no tree view is really suited to actually working with or learning about my family. The profile detail view's Family Members section works better for that: it shows the person's parents, siblings, spouses, and children, with summary dates. This is a fairly zoomed-in view of the tree, but it gives enough detail and context to keep track of all the same-named generations.
(Offline genealogy software often has some version of an "all-in-one" chart, but I've never found one that really works for me. Trees are just too multi-dimensional to be properly representable in two dimensions.)
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