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Managing Relationships in Family Tree Maker 2019

With the Manage Relationships tool you can filter relationships between couples and between parents and their children by type (e.g., Partner or Spouse; Biological or Adopted; and so on). You can change one relationship type to another in just a few clicks, whether that be for a single relationship or many at once.

This article covers the following topics:

- Managing Relationships in Family Tree Maker 2019 for Mac
- Managing Relationships in Family Tree Maker 2019 for Windows

Managing Relationships in Family Tree Maker 2019 for Mac

To use the Manage Relationships tool, follow these steps:

1. With your tree open in Family Tree Maker, choose Manage Relationships from the Edit menu.

2. Back up your tree file if prompted. We always recommend creating a full backup before you perform any major changes to the tree.

3. In the Manage Relationships dialog that opens, choose the type of relationship you want to change from the Show relationships pop-up menu.  

The Show relationships filter allows you to find, for example, all couples who have a Marriage fact but whose relationship type is currently set to “Unknown”. The tool makes it very easy to change such relationships to “Spouse”.

The Relationship Instances list shows all relationships of the type you have selected. The total number of instances appears next to the list heading.


4. Select the checkbox next to each of the relationships where you want to change the relationship type. To change all the relationships in the list, select the Select all checkbox.

Tip: To find specific couples or parent-child relationships more easily, you can sort the lists of people alphabetically by clicking the Person 1, Person 2, Parent, and Child column headers.

5. From the Change selected relationships to this type pop-up menu, choose the new relationship type you want the selected relationships to have.

6. Click Apply.

Updating the relationship types may take some time, especially if you are applying a lot of changes. A progress indicator at the bottom of the dialog shows the status of the process.
As soon as the changes are complete, the selected relationships are removed from the list. You can find them again by choosing the new relationship type from the Show relationships pop-up menu.

7.  When you’re finished, click Close.

Managing Relationships in Family Tree Maker 2019 for Windows

To use the Manage Relationships tool, follow these steps:

1. With your tree open in Family Tree Maker, choose Manage Relationships from the Edit menu.

2. Back up your tree file if prompted. We always recommend creating a full backup before you perform any major changes to the tree.  

3. In the Manage Relationships dialog that opens, choose the type of relationship you want to change from the Show relationships drop-down list.

The Show relationships filter allows you to find, for example, all couples who have a Marriage fact but whose relationship type is currently set to “Unknown”. The tool makes it very easy to change such relationships to “Spouse”.

The Relationship Instances list shows all relationships of the type you have selected. The total number of instances appears next to the list heading.

4. Select the checkbox next to each of the relationships where you want to change the relationship type. To change all the relationships in the list, select the Select all checkbox.

Tip: The list is initially sorted alphabetically by the names of the people in the first column (Person 1 or Parent). If needed to find specific relationships, you can click the Person 2 or Child column header to sort the list alphabetically by the names in that column.

5. From the Change selected relationships to this type drop-down list, choose the new relationship type you want the selected relationships to have.

6. Click Apply.

Updating the relationship types may take some time, especially if you are applying a lot of changes. A progress indicator at the bottom of the dialog shows the status of the process.
As soon as the changes are complete, the selected relationships are removed from the list. You can find them again by choosing the new relationship type from the Show relationships drop-down list.

7.  When you’re finished, click Close.

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