Is there an easy way to switch from persons category to families category such that all families of current selected person become active?
I have searched but couldn’t find an answer. So either my search failed or there is no answer. It would be very helpful if I do not have to type in a filter and then scroll through a list (some filters yield quite a sizeable list)
like being in Persons Category, A Mr John Johnson is active. It would be helpful if I easily could switch to his families directly. Thanks
win10 AIO64-5.1.5-1
Switching focus for the Active Person is only place that synchronizes focus in more than one view (People, Relationships & Charts). The Active Person focus is so important that there is an extra Context menu of the Person Editor to allow making that object active.
The Family category is the other other Editor with such a context menu… but it only has the QuickView option.
A workaround is to use the Clipboard. The context menus for each of its objects (except the “ref” object types that carry extra context) has the option to make that object “active”.
But it is sometimes awkward to grab an object (that you can see on the screen) and drag it to the clipboard. You just cannot get a ‘grip’ everywhere.
You can drag from the header of the Family Editor to put that family on the clipboard. Then right-click the Family on the clipboard to see the context menu.
The Relationship View allows the Parents or Family (bold+faced label or ID) to be dragged to the Clipboard.
In the Person Editor you cannot drag a Family directly to the Clipboard. Instead, double-click a Family row of the Events tab to open the Family Editor.
Thank you very much for your informative reply. As I understand it you can not switch directly from people to view all the families this person has. It seems to me that the Family rows in the Person Editor comes closest.
Hey, I never new that the clipboard could be used for that, but I know a few other places where I’d like to see more options to switch too, like from an event to a person, or from anything in the references Gramplet to the associated object.
I felt a need for the latter a lot, when I was cleaning up locations, and adding those to a hierarchy, especially when cities exist in more than one country or province, like Harlingen and Paris, which both exist on my continent, but also in Texas. When I have the references Gramplet in the bottom pane, while browsing locations, I can scroll through the events that link to that location, but switching from that to a person in the people category is not possible. And that would be very nice to see that person in context. Switching to the relations category would also be a good option, especially when a family event is selected.
If you are asking about opening the Family Editor, then yes, double-clicking on the bold-faced “Family” row in the Events tab of the Person Editor is very efficient. But I prefer the Relationships view. It shows their Parent’s family (for blended families) as well as where the person is a spouse.
In my workflows, I have found only rare use for the Families view.
Mostly, I use the Family category View to find families where only the given names are known for 2 (or more) persons in the family. (Such as: father named ‘John’, mother named ‘Mary’ and child named ‘William’)
It is also useful for spotting duplicate families that ought to be merged.
Where do you use it?
When I started using Gramps, I was looking for the same thing as the OP. After creating a person, I wanted to create a family so it seemed like I ought to switch to the Families view and when I did, the view did not synchronize to the Active person. Same when I wanted to edit the family of the active person.
It was only once I started using CombinedView in Relationships that I realized I don’t really need to go to Families view. So, now I don’t feel the need for it but could the Families view also sync with the Active Person? Any reason why it can’t/shouldn’t?
The Family doesn’t have a one-to-one relationship to a Person.
The Active Person could be a Partner (in either the Father or Mother side, regardless of gender) in multiple Families. Or a Child of multiple families. Or not be in any Family at all.
It certainly would be useful if the Search Bar or Family Filter Gramplet had an option to Filter to “Families of the Active Person”. Where it shows families that have the Active Person as a member (father, mother, or child)
Actually, this would probably be more useful (and used more often) if it was created to be the default Gramplet for the Family category bottombar. (Similar to the QuickView gramplet with the Person - Person References… if it actually identified the Active Person and included Families that had them as a Child too. With a column for Roles. The click actions & context menus should be different too - click to make the family Active with a QuickView selection submenu.)
I do most of my work in the Relationships view.
Once a person is selected, moving to the Relationships view keeps the person as the active person.
To add a spousal family, select the “Add a new family with person as parent” icon. 
Want to add parents for the active person… 
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