The Islands Sidebar

What Is the Islands Sidebar?

The Top Button

Using Islands with the Tree View

Updating the Islands

Sharing the Islands Sidebar (Printing, Emailing, etc.)

Marking People in the Islands Sidebar

Sidebars

What Is the Islands Sidebar?

The Islands sidebar lets you locate "islands" in your family file — groups of people linked to each other, but not linked to people in other islands.

You could think of islands (especially small islands) as unlinked branches of the family tree, or disjointed fragments of the family file. Those branches/fragments may contain parents, spouses, children, and other relatives; but, none of those people are connected to other islands. The islands feature identifies these branches/fragments.

Note: it's typical for a family file to have one large "island" and a few, or perhaps several, smaller islands. it's also perfectly legitimate to have only ONE island, where everybody is connected. There is no right or wrong number of islands; however examining your islands will reveal the degree to which you've recorded separate groups of people in your family file.

The Islands sidebar creates a list of islands (at the top) and then, as you select an island, the bottom list shows all the people in the island, making it easy to see, edit, mark, link, report, or chart people in an island.

To see a list of islands in the family file, click Islands in the Sidebar list.

Each island can be given a meaningful name. Just click the name in the top list and press the Enter key. The island name is edited directly in the list and can be a maximum of 100 characters.

People in the island can be marked, to facilitate editing or to create marked sets. Use the Marking Shortcuts button, beneath the sidebar. Or use the individual check-mark button to the left of each name.

The Top Button

The Top button attempts to analyze the inhabitants of the currently selected island and determine which ancestor is in the earliest generation and at the top of the tree, so to speak. This person is then selected in the bottom list — the list of people in the island selected in the top list.

In smaller islands, the Top button will be quite accurate, selecting the person at the top of the tree very reliably. (The "top" of the tree would be considered backward in time.) However, this feature can't be accurate in all scenarios, particularly when considering an island with several branches moving backward; or, in islands where people do not descend from a common person or couple.

The Top button is disabled when the current "top" person is already selected in the bottom list of the Islands sidebar.

Using Islands with the Tree View

Tip: Here's a nifty way to see a Tree view of each island...

  1. Show the Islands sidebar (click Islands in the list of sidebars).
  2. Show the tree view (click Tree View in the navbar on the left).
  3. Click on different islands in the sidebar.
  4. For all of the "smaller" islands, the tree view includes everybody on the island.

Updating the Islands

When selecting Islands from the list of sidebars, the Islands sidebar will automatically be updated.

However, when making changes — such as adding children or parents to somebody in an island, or deleting a person in an island — while the Islands sidebar is still open, it'll be necessary to click the Update button at the bottom of the Islands sidebar.

Doing so will refresh the contents of the Islands sidebar.

When the Islands Don't Appear Instantly

If Reunion determines that more than a few seconds will be required to generate the list of islands, a Build Islands List button will appear which requires one extra step to build the list.