Salasilah · Step-by-step

Editing a person

Everything the person panel holds — the everyday fields, the ones behind Advanced, photos, and how to close without losing work. Fourth of six guides to the tree workspace.

✎ Draft. Screenshots are auto-generated from the live app (re-runnable). English only for now. Relationships live in the Family section, covered by the next guide.

Opening the panel

The pencil on a card opens that person's details in a panel on the right. Clicking the card itself re-centres the tree instead — a distinction worth learning early.

A tree card with an arrow pointing at its pencil button
The pencil sits on the card, between the faraid and add-family buttons.
A

The everyday fields

What Simple shows
A1

It always opens in Simple

Simple shows the everyday fields and nothing else. That is deliberate: most edits need only the three below it.

The person panel in Simple mode, with three fields numbered
1 Full name · 2 Gender · 3 Living or deceased — each badge is repeated beside the step that explains it.
A2

Full name

The only required field, and the one drawn on the card. Write it the way your family says it.

A3

Gender

Male or Female. It sets the card's colour, decides where the person sits among relatives, and — because Faraid shares differ by gender — it affects any inheritance calculation they appear in.

A4

Living or deceased

Choosing Deceased reveals the death-date field. It is a status in its own right, so you can mark someone deceased even when nobody remembers the date.

This also drives privacy: on a shared tree, living people's details are redacted. Marking someone correctly matters beyond tidiness.
A5

Dates you only half know

Genealogy dates are usually incomplete, so the date fields take whatever you have: 1958, May 1958, 12/05/1958 or 12 May 1958. A line underneath confirms how it was read before you save.

A year on its own is a perfectly good answer — better than leaving it blank or inventing a day.

The birth date field holding just a year, read back as year only
A bare year is accepted, and the note says how it was read.
B

Photos

Optional, but they transform a tree
B1

Add and adjust a photo

Choose a file, or paste straight from the clipboard — handy for a screenshot or something copied from a message. Once there is a photo you get three tools:

  1. Paste — replace it with whatever is on the clipboard.
  2. Reposition — pan and zoom to choose what the round frame shows.
  3. Remove — back to the silhouette.
Reposition changes framing only. The original image is kept, so you can re-frame later without re-uploading.
A photo in the preview box beside the paste, reposition and remove tools
1 Paste · 2 Reposition · 3 Remove — matching the list above. The three only appear once a photo exists, as here.
C

Advanced

The other half of the form
C1

Switch to Advanced

Reveals the rest of the fields. The panel returns to Simple next time you open it — Advanced lasts for this panel only, so the everyday view stays uncluttered.

The Simple and Advanced toggle, with an arrow on Advanced
Advanced is per-panel, not a setting.
C2

Salutations, tags, note and biography

  1. Salutations — honorifics in any combination, e.g. Tun Sri Dato' Haji.
  2. Tags — short labels, up to 20. Tags are searchable and can filter the people list.
  3. Note — a one-line caption.
  4. Biography — longer free text, as much as you like.
Salutations, note and biography are owner-only. They are stripped from every share and fork, so they never reach a recipient. They do travel in your own full JSON export.
The salutations and tags fields
1 Salutations · 2 Tags — matching the list above.
The note and biography fields
3 Note · 4 Biography — the same list, further down the panel.
C3

Include in faraid, and Adopted

Include in faraid is on by default; turn it off for someone recorded for lineage only, and the inheritance maths will ignore them. Adopted marks an adoptive relationship.

  1. Include in faraid — ticked, as it is for every new person.
  2. Adopted — off unless you say otherwise.
Ticking Adopted clears Include in faraid and locks it, because an adopted child does not inherit under faraid. The server enforces this however the record is created — including by import.
The include-in-faraid and adopted checkboxes in their default state
1 Include in faraid · 2 Adopted — matching the list above.
With Adopted ticked, Include in faraid is greyed out and reads excluded
The same two rows with Adopted ticked: faraid is cleared, greyed, and says why.
C4

Display order

Two numbers that override left-to-right position on the canvas: among siblings and among co-spouses. Leave both at 0 to order by birth date, which is what you want almost always.

Reach for these when birth dates are unknown and the drawn order looks wrong.

The two display-order boxes, both zero
1 Among siblings · 2 Among co-spouses — both 0, the default.
D

Finishing

Saving, discarding, deleting
D1

Save

Writes the changes and redraws the tree. Both buttons sit at the foot of the panel, where they stay put however far you scroll.

The delete and save buttons at the foot of the panel
1 Delete · 2 Save — left to right, as they sit on the panel.
D2

Closing without saving

Closing with the × while something is unsaved asks first, so a stray click cannot lose your typing. Keep editing is the way back.

The unsaved changes prompt offering save, discard or keep editing
Three ways out, and the person is named so you know whose edit it is.
D3

Delete a person

Removes them from the tree entirely.

This cannot be undone, and it is rarely what you want. If the problem is a wrong relationship, unlink it in the Family section instead — that leaves the person intact. Delete is for someone who should never have been added.