Research¶

Under Research in the main menu — just above Administration — you'll find the tools you use while researching: notes, bookmarks, what you worked on most recently, the calendar, the statistics, and the reports. This page also describes Research branch, the view where you go through a person's closest relationships to check that the right people belong together.

The tabs¶

Tab	What it shows
Research notes	Your notes with things you want to remember. → Research notes
Bookmarks	People, places, and events you want to come back to
Recently changed	The people and places you most recently added or changed
Calendar	What happened on a given day in your family's history. → Calendar
People statistics	Names, gender, relationships, places, family, and lifespan. → Person statistics
Place statistics	Most common countries, counties, place types, and more. → Place statistics
Reports	Ancestor charts, descendant charts, family sheets, person profiles, and source lists as PDF. → Reports

The links on the welcome page to the calendar and the statistics lead here, to the right tab.

Bookmarks¶

If you come across a person, place, or event you want to come back to — but not right now — you can bookmark it.

Bookmark with the bookmark icon in the header of the person page, place page, or event page (and in the matching dialogs). One click is enough. The icon is filled in when the record is bookmarked.

Write a note by clicking the icon again once the record is bookmarked. A small box opens where you can write why you want to come back — for example "check the baptism witnesses in Kumla C:4" — or remove the bookmark.

All bookmarks are gathered under Research → Bookmarks, most recently added first. There you can:

filter by people, places, or events
open the record by clicking its name
go straight to Research branch for a bookmarked person
edit the note
remove the bookmark

If the bookmark has a note, the program asks before removing it, so the text isn't lost by mistake. The person, place, or event itself is never affected.

When a bookmarked record is deleted or merged

If a bookmarked person, place, or event is deleted, the bookmark is removed with it — the confirmation says so before you delete. If you merge two records that are both bookmarked, you get one bookmark, and both notes are kept.

Recently changed¶

The tab shows the people and places you most recently added or changed — the same as the Continue where you left off card on the welcome page, but with more rows. Click a row to open the record, or the tree icon to continue researching a person's branch.

Records that came from an import and that you haven't changed since aren't shown, so a large GEDCOM import doesn't fill up the list.

Research branch¶

Research branch starts from a focus person — much like the family tree — but shows the relationships as tables with the most important details visible. That makes it easy to judge whether the right people really belong together, and to correct things on the spot if something is wrong.

Opening the view¶

The Research branch button is found in several places:

in the header of a person's page
in the person dialog that opens when you click a person in the family tree
on the person cards in the family tree — hover over a card and the button appears next to the focus button
under Research → Bookmarks and Research → Recently changed

What's shown?¶

At the top is the focus person with dates and places of birth and death. Below that is a table for each kind of relationship: Parents, Partners, Children, Siblings, and Other relations (godparent, witness, and similar).

Each row shows:

Name — click it to make that person the new focus person
Relationship — e.g. biological parent, married, or half-sibling. Other relations are described with a full sentence, such as "Karl Svensson is the godparent of Anna Berg".
Born and Died — date and place
Relationship dates — for partners, e.g. marriage and divorce
Check — see below

Dates are shown with the precision they have: a year, a year and month, or a full date.

The Check column¶

The Check column helps you judge whether the details are plausible:

Parent's age at the child's birth — on the parents' and children's rows. Highlighted in orange if the parent was under 15 or over 60.
Born after the parent's death — highlighted in orange.
Age difference — for partners and siblings.
Warnings — the program's own checks of the relationship. Hover over the marker to read them.

"approx." in front of an age means it's based on a date known only to the year or month.

Changing the relationships¶

Add — each table has a button, e.g. Add child. Choose Existing person to look up someone who's already there, or New person to create the person first. Either way, the relationship dialog opens with the type preselected, so you can choose a subtype, fill in dates, and see any warnings.
Edit — the pencil on the row opens the relationship for editing.
Remove — the trash can removes the relationship. The people themselves remain.

Other relations can be added in both directions: that the chosen person is a godparent of or witness for the focus person, or that the focus person has the role.

Moving along the branch¶

Click a name — or the focus button on the row — to move the focus to that person. The Visited row at the top shows the people you've gone through during this session; click a name there to go back.

The header also has:

Open person — the person's own page
Show in tree — the family tree with the same focus person
Edit — the person's details
the bookmark and note buttons