You do not have to close the Movement Control Box when making changes to the Diagram Window.
Clicking on any drag-and-move action type (e.g. , or ) automatically enables moving/resizing. Closing the Movement Control Box does not cancel the current drag-and-move action. If you wish to disable moving/resizing and revert to normal mode, untick Enable Moving/Resizing.
Fields and Buttons
| Box and Bar | When enabled, you can click and drag on any
box to move that box, and its branch, 'outwards'. For example, if you clicked-and-dragged
on an ancestor box in an ancestor diagram you could move that box, and its
entire ancestral branch outwards (or back).
When the drag-action is box and bar you can either click on a box or on a bar. A bar means either a child bar (the horizontal line that connects all children of a given couple), or a parent bar - the notional equivalent of a child bar for ancestors. If a couple only have one child, there will be no horizontal line and hence no child bar as such. But you can see where the child bar would have gone, because, in Box and Bar mode, Family Historian displays tiny little white diamond shapes where a child's connecting line meets the child bar (or the place where a child bar would have been). By click-and-dragging on these little white diamonds you can do a bar drag-move, even if there isn't a bar. If you use the 'fork' style for showing ancestors, the parent bar is the horizontal part of this line. If you don't, most of the time, the concept of a parent bar may appear purely notional. If it existed, it would be the horizontal line that both of an ancestor's parents are connected to. However, unless you use the forking style for ancestral lines, there rarely is anything resembling a horizontal line where the parent bar would go. Nevertheless, there is still a tiny little white diamond and by click-and-dragging on this, you can do a bar drag-and-move for ancestors too. A bar drag-move allows greater freedom than a box drag-move. As well as moving the affected branch(es) outwards (or back), you can also move them sideways (or up and down if the diagram has a sideways orientation). Because Family Historian trees are smart trees, the diagram will automatically adjust to accommodate the new branch positions, and to make best use of space. |
| Fixed Point | Fixed point dragging is very useful if you want to
move 2 spouses or siblings further apart (or bring
them back closer together). But you can also use it
to move entire branches of a tree further apart or
closer together. For example, to move a brother
away from this sister, make the sister a fixed point
by selecting her box and then clicking on the Set
button. Then click-and-drag on the brother's box.
To drag 2 entire branches apart (or bring them back together) make any one box, in either branch, a fixed point; and click-and-drag on any box in the other branch (this only works if the boxes belong to the same tree). You can use fixed point dragging to create a space within a diagram to put a picture into (say). Suppose in a descendant diagram, you clicked on a descendant box and moved his or her entire branch outwards. His or her siblings (and their branches) would move inwards to fill up the space. To move them back to where they had been, make one of the siblings a fixed point and click-and-drag to move the others. Tip: When moving/resizing is enabled, a quick way to set a fixed point is to press the Alt key while clicking on a box. Pressing Alt while clicking elsewhere clears the fixed point and switches you back to Box and Bar. |
| Tree | When enabled, you can move an entire tree
around by clicking-and-dragging on any box within
the tree. You can also move multiple trees around
by selecting boxes from different trees and clicking-
and-dragging on any one of them. You do not
have to select all boxes within each tree. If the
selection includes one or more boxes from a given
tree, that entire tree will will be moved, along with
the other trees, when you click-and-drag on any
selected box.
Usually when you open a diagram there is only one tree in it (the exception is the Everyone diagram which typically contains numerous trees, even when first opened). You add more trees from the Insert into Diagram submenu on the Diagram menu. |
| Shift Spouse | Use the Shift Spouse buttons ( << and >> )
to change the displayed order of spouses within a diagram. This does not
affect the order of spouses in your records.
Tip: If you wish to change the order of spouses in your
records use the |
| Shift Sibling | Use the Shift Sibling buttons ( << and >> )
to change the displayed order of siblings within a diagram. This does
not affect the order of siblings in your records.
Tip: If you wish to change the order of siblings in your
records use the |
Move
Up and 
Move Down
commands instead of the Shift Spouse buttons.
Tip: If you wish to move a branch of a tree to a position in your diagram that you cannot reach using any of the supported drag-and-move action types, you can achieve the same effect by inserting another tree into the diagram showing the same information as the branch you wished to move. You can then hide the branch in the first tree (using expansion buttons, or by using the Hide Selected Boxes command). Finally, you can insert into the diagram as many lines as you wish to link the newly inserted tree back to the first tree.