How to Add People to a Family
Everyone on a family tree is an individual record in the group. This article covers adding them and the details that change how they appear.
Adding a Person
Add each family member as an individual in the family's group. A name is enough to get someone onto the tree — the rest can follow as you learn it.
You can also add people as you build the diagram: when you record a relationship to someone who isn't in the workspace yet, you can create them on the spot rather than breaking off to add them separately.
Details That Affect the Diagram
Most fields are for your records. A few change what the diagram looks like:
- Name — what appears on the person's node.
- Gender — determines the avatar colour. Male, female, non-binary, and unknown each have their own, and the colours are configurable.
- Deceased status — deceased family members are styled differently from living ones, so a tree reads correctly at a glance without anyone having to annotate it.
- Dates — birth and death dates support the generational reading of the tree and are useful context in an estate planning discussion.
Someone with no gender recorded still appears; they use the "unknown" avatar colour.
Details Worth Recording Anyway
These do not change the diagram, but they are the reason the family record is useful between meetings:
- Contact details, so the family record is the one place to look.
- Notes about the person's role in the family or in the plan.
- Documents — birth and marriage certificates, wills, and other paperwork can be attached to the individual. See How to Attach Documents to an Entity.
People Who Are Not Blood Relatives
Partners, step-parents, guardians, and carers all belong on the tree if they matter to the family's picture. Add them as individuals like anyone else and connect them with the relationship type that fits — see Family Relationship Types.
Deceased Family Members
Add and keep deceased family members. They anchor the generations below them, and removing them would disconnect their descendants from the rest of the tree. Mark them as deceased rather than deleting them.
What Comes Next
Once the people exist, connect them: see Family Relationship Types for what the links mean, then How to Create a Family Tree to generate the diagram.