Diagrams and Charts

How to Select Multiple Boxes in Diagrams

It is often useful to be able to select more than one box at a time in diagrams.  Here are some techniques that you can use to do that:

• Press-and-hold the Ctrl key while clicking on several boxes in turn.  This will select each box without unselecting other boxes.
• Click-and-drag on the background of the dialog to draw a stretchy box round the boxes.  When you release the button they will all be selected.  If you want to select a group of boxes that are difficult to select because they are too near other boxes, consider using a 'Box & Branch' action with the Movement Control Box to pull the different branches apart temporarily.
  
• Right click on a box, and then choose Select Branch Boxes from the dropdown menu that appears, to select the entire branch leading off from it.
• Open the Family Connection Mapper, select a route, click on the Menu button (the last button on the toolbar under the list of routes), and choose Select Route Boxes from the dropdown menu that appears to select all boxes on a specified route (see the Help for Family Connection Mapper if you don't know what a 'route' is).
  
• Press Ctrl-A to select all boxes in a diagram.  You can also do this by clicking Select All Boxes on the Selection & Marks submenu of the Diagram menu.
• Click Invert Selection on the same submenu to invert the current selection.  Boxes that had previously been selected will be unselected, and boxes that had previously been selected will be unselected.
  
• You can 'mark' boxes by selecting them and pressing Ctrl+M.   By default, marked boxes have a yellow background.  When you have marked numerous boxes, you can then use the Select Marked Boxes command to select them all.  Later you can use Clear All Marks to remove the marks.
  
• You can use a query to select boxes.  Effectively this is two-stage operation.  First use the query to mark the boxes you want to select using Set/Clear Marks Using Query.  Then use the Select Marked Boxes command to select them all.  Again, the relevant commands are on the Selection & Marks submenu of the Diagram menu.  By using a query, you can select all and only boxes for Individuals that have a particular record flag, or are in a particular named list, or satisfy any other condition you can think of.