Diagrams and Charts

How to Choose Preferred Look for Standard Diagrams

The "Choose Preferred Look for Standard Diagrams" dialog is accessed by clicking on the "Charts" toolbar button  on the main application toolbar, and selecting "Choose Preferred Look for Standard Diagrams" in the dropdown menu that appears.

The six most important standard diagrams are Ancestors, Descendants, Ancestors & Descendants, All Relatives, All Relatives + Indirect Relatives, and Everyone.  You can give these six diagrams whatever look you prefer, and you can easily switch the look of any or all of them, at any time and as often as you wish.  To do this, select the standard diagrams you wish to change - all of them, if you wish, or any subset - and click the Copy Option Set... button.  You will be prompted to select a diagram from a list of diagrams.  These can be custom diagrams you have created yourself (or that may have been created for you if you upgraded from a previous version), or other standard diagrams.  Select whichever diagram has the kind of look you are after.  The diagram options from the selected diagram will be copied to the standard diagrams in the list of six that you previously selected.

Two of the six standard diagrams, the Everyone diagram and the All Relatives + Indirect Relatives diagram, are multi-tree diagrams - that is, they are diagrams which when opened may already contain multiple trees.  Background stripes do not in general look good with multi-tree diagrams, as the stripes will only align with the boxes from the primary tree in the diagram.  For this reason, background stripes and other background options are omitted when you copy an option set into either of the two multi-tree diagrams.

The diagram options that are copied will not change the character of any of the standard diagrams.  The 'Ancestor' diagram will still be an ancestor diagram, the 'Descendant' diagram will still be a descendant diagram, and so on.  But all the other details that together make up the overall look of the diagram you have chosen to copy, will be copied over to the selected standard diagrams.

You should feel free to experiment with different looks as much as you like.  At any time, you can restore any or all of the six standard diagrams to their installation default look, by selecting them and clicking the Restore Defaults button.

When you change the look of standard diagrams, this has no effect on diagrams that have already been created, such as saved charts, charts in books, or diagrams that are already open in the Diagram Window.  It only affects new diagrams that you create after changing the look.