Does the "Set Preferred" feature only work in Landscape if the individual is the prime person?
I have a situation whereby if I begin the pedigree with the father of the daughter I appear only to see her relationship with her husband in Landscape, which means her illegitimate children - and any descendents - are hidden.
In order to view that branch, is having her as the starting person the only option?
Example in the screenshots below. Having father William set as head of the branch only appears to enable me to view any offspring / branch through Jane via her husband, George, even if I "Set Preferred" to the unknown relationship that produced her two illegitimate children. As illustrated in the second screenshot, the setting only appears to work if I select Jane as head of the branch. Ideally, I would like to see that William had grandchildren through Jane, as well as his other children (John and William).
Answers
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While I am waiting for a response to this issue, I thought I should mention that I have yet to test the situation whereby if a male (or female, I guess) has two spouses, whether the "preferred spouse" does then get to appear in the pedigree of the father of that individual. If not, does one relationship appear by "default": for example, is the first of two (or more) relationships the one that appears on the chart? I have treated the matter (in my illustrated example) as if it it something just applicable to where there is an unknown father - perhaps it goes further than that!
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Further to my previous comment, I have just tested this issue for the situation where an individual has been entered with two spouses. In that case, one can switch from having the pedigree of the person's father include one spouse or the other, and hence the descendents (if any) through either of the relationships.
I would still like to know why it doesn't seem possible for this to work when one chooses "Set Preferred" where there is an unknown relationship, as shown below. Jane's spouse George Hunton stubbornly refuses to disappear from the chart, even though he had another wife and I have set his preferred relationship to be the one with her, not Jane.
Starting with Jane's father William Wrightson, as suggested earlier, there seems no way of including these grandchildren in his (Landscape) pedigree.
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As there definitely appears to be a flaw in the programming here (unless such illegitimate children are given less consideration than ones born within a known relationship), could you please escalate this one for a "fix", too?
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I should have thought of this earlier, but there is a workaround for this problem, albeit not a very satisfactory one. Against the advice that names should be left blank if they cannot be discovered, I created a "spouse" for Jane Wrightson with the name "Unknown Father". (Could have called him "Unknown Spouse", but my intention was focussed on making it aware from his pedigree chart that William Wrightson had grandchildren by three of his children, not just the two implied in my earlier screenshot.)
The result produces exactly what I wanted, but as an advocate of not including unknown individuals, I am not happy with my own solution! (Some users insist on creating a spouse of "Mrs Smith", where the wife of "John Smith" / mother of his children cannot be ascertained.)
Here's the illustration of my "workaround", but I still strongly believe there is a flaw in the programming whereby you can "Set Preferred" to an individual inputted alone with their children, but this cannot be reflected in the chart with their father at the head.
The only way I have found of showing (in his Landscape view) William had grandchildren by daughter Jane, too.
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@Paul W I had started drafting a comment yesterday, but you have overtaken it with your further comments, so I'll just make a brief addition.
I have tried another case with multiple spouses, and another with one spouse and a child with an unknown father. I found exactly the same behaviour.
When I read the title of this discussion, I took it more literally than you intended. At first, I thought you were asking if you could use a Spouses button to change the preferred spouse only if the button belonged to the prime person. That is the case; if you click a Spouses button for any non-prime person, the resulting selection dialog does not have option buttons to allow you to change your preference. That makes sense if you are clicking a Spouses button on an ancestor of the prime person, but maybe it's an unnecessary restriction when applied to a descendant of the prime person.
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