Salasilah · Step-by-step

Tools and output

Checking a tree for gaps, getting it out of Salasilah, sharing it, calculating faraid, and telling us when something is wrong. The last of six guides to the tree workspace.

✎ Draft. Screenshots are auto-generated from the live app (re-runnable). English only for now. The numbers on each picture are the step numbers that explain them.

The tools in the toolbar

Four of the five live in the toolbar's second row; the fifth (Faraid) sits on each person's card. None of them change your tree — they check it, copy it, or send it.

The Repair, Export, Share and Report buttons in the toolbar
1 Repair · 2 Export · 3 Share · 4 Report — each badge is repeated beside the step that explains it. Help sits between Share and Report and is covered by its own guide.
A

Checking your work

Before you share it with anyone
A1

Repair

Lists people the tree can tell are incompletely joined up: not connected to anyone, missing a parent, or not linked to their child's other parent. The number on the button is how many.

Click any name to open that person so you can add the missing link.

Repair never changes anything by itself. It only finds and takes you there — every fix is yours to make, because only you know which answer is right.

A person who is not connected to anyone is also invisible to the Everyone view, since that draws the family reachable from the subject. Repair is how you find them.

The Repair overlay listing two problems
Grouped by the kind of gap, with a count for each.
B

Getting the tree out

A picture, or the data
B1

Export

Five formats in two groups. The numbers below match the numbers on the picture:

  1. SVG — a drawing that stays sharp at any size. Best for printing large.
  2. PNG — an ordinary image, easy to paste into a message or a document.
  3. PDF — a printable page in light colours and landscape, ready to hand out.
  4. JSON — the data: the people on screen and the links between them, and the only format Salasilah can import back.
  5. GEDCOM — the standard genealogy interchange format, for moving people into other family-tree software.
All five export what is currently on screen — the generations and Show settings you chose. Set the view up first, then export.
For a backup of the whole family, use Backup on the dashboard. These exports contain only the people you can see, so a narrow view makes a narrow file — useful for handing one branch to a relative, not for safekeeping.
The export menu with its five formats numbered
1 SVG · 2 PNG · 3 PDF · 4 JSON backup · 5 GEDCOM — matching the list above.

Choosing either data format opens the same dialog as Backup on the dashboard — the same options and the same protections, just scoped to what you are looking at.

Encrypt this file is ticked by default. You choose a password, and the file is locked with it — Salasilah's importer will ask for that password when you restore. Untick it and you get plain JSON, which anyone who has the file can read.

Send the password separately from the file. A locked file and its password in the same message protect nobody. Salasilah does remember the password so you can look it up later if you forget it.

GEDCOM is never encrypted — it is a plain-text interchange format and includes living people's names, so store and send it carefully.

The export dialog with encryption ticked
The dashboard's Backup dialog, scoped here to the current view.
B2

Which one do you want?

To show someone the tree, PDF or PNG. To print it big, SVG. To hand a branch to a relative, JSON — encrypted. To move people into other genealogy software, GEDCOM.

A picture is not a backup, and neither is a partial export. For safekeeping use Backup on the dashboard, which always takes the whole tree.
B3

Share

Creates a link that lets someone see the tree without an account of their own. You choose how much to send — the whole tree, just the current view, or one person's bloodline — and can protect it with a passcode and an expiry date.

Sharing starts here, inside the tree, precisely so you can see what you are sending before you send it.

Living people's names are redacted automatically on a share. The full detail in front of you is not what your recipient receives. The sharing guide covers every option.
The share dialog
Scope, protection and expiry, all before the link exists.
C

Faraid, and telling us things

The last two
C1

Faraid

The small button on a person's card opens the Faraid calculator with them as the deceased, and works out each heir's share from the relatives recorded in the tree. K does the same for the highlighted card.

It reads the tree; it never edits it. If an heir looks wrong, the fix is in the tree — check gender, living/deceased status, and the Include in faraid flag.

The result is informational, not a ruling. Salasilah computes a reference calculation; a qualified authority decides the actual distribution.
The faraid button on a person's card
The faraid button sits on every card, unless you hide it in the Show menu.
C2

Report a problem

Describe what happened and send it. The report carries the page you were on, so you do not have to explain where you were.

Worth using for anything that looked wrong, not only for errors — wording that confused you is a problem too.

The report a problem form
A description is enough; the context is attached for you.
C3

That's the whole tree workspace

Six guides cover it end to end: getting around, choosing who you see, adding people, editing a person, family relationships, and this one.

All six are listed in Essentials, and any of them can be opened from the Help panel inside the tree.