Changing home person on tree

Megan Skinner

I would like to put one of my children as the home person on the family tree. Currently I only see relationships to me and I would like to find relations on my husbands family.

How can I do this?

John L. Kennedy

@Megan Skinner

Hi Megan, thank you for asking this question. The answer is quite straightforward. You go to FS Family Tree and open it up in any of the four formats (Landscape, Portrait, Fan, or Descendancy) and simply click on the person you want to become the home person. In the box that opens up, in the bottom left hand corner, click on "Tree", That will display the tree starting from the newly identified ancestor. Have you, or someone else (perhaps your husband?) added the information on his line? Maybe that's why you can't see any of his ancestors? I hope this will assist you in your FH quest.

Kind Regards,

John L. Kennedy.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

John's answer will only affect tree displays. It will not influence what "show my relationship" does. Of course, I'm not certain that changing your starting person will do that, either; it certainly doesn't affect any of the features offered under "Activities". ("Famous Relatives" and "Where am I from?", for example, both always use the account-holder, no matter who the starting person is set to.)

Anyway, to change your starting person, go to the intended person's profile and copy the ID, then click your name or nickname that shows at the top right, and choose Settings. Under Account, scroll down to Family Tree Preferences and click the Edit pencil. Paste the ID into the box and click Save.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I've been ruminating on this ever since I discovered that the starting person doesn't affect any Activities: one way to show relationships to both sides of the family would be to edit my own profile's relationships to make it into my child. I'd have to add another living profile (placeholder) representing myself, make that into the mother of my account-linked profile, attach it to my spouse and parents, and detach the spousal relationship of my account-linked profile -- and then remember to subtract one generation from any relationship it showed me.

Hmm. Maybe I'll go play with this on the Beta site, just to see what happens.

Gordon Collett

View My Relationship does, at least when I look at it, show relationships to my wife so that I can see how she is related to them:

If you go to your husband's grandfather and click View My Relationship, do you get something different than this? Notice that is doesn't say I am related to my wife's grandfather, just that she is.

(Effectively changing the ownership of your account, Julia, from you to your "daughter" but you still controlling it just strikes me as not being a very good idea, not that I can give you any particular reasons why.)

Megan Skinner

I can see his ancestors. When I asked the question I thought it was going to be linked to RootsTech.

On RootsTech, the only people I see are directly related to me. I want to see if anyone related to my husband has also joined RootsTech. Is there a way to enter my husband's name so his relatives show up?

Thanks,

Megan

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I think "View My Relationship" behaves differently for tree profiles than it does for other FS users. If I go to my husband's 4th great-grandmother, then it shows that yes, she's my husband's 4th great-grandmother. However, if I click the name of the person who added her name, it shows "No Relationship", even though I know the person is a half fourth or fifth cousin of my husband's (possibly once removed).

And as far as I can tell, none of the functions under Activities consider relationships by marriage at all.