Help and guide

Sign in with your Google account or with an email address and password. You’ll land on your dashboard, which lists every tree you belong to.

To start a new tree, type a name under Start a new tree, such as “The Sharma Family” or “Mum’s side”, and click Create tree. You become the tree’s owner and are taken straight to its canvas.

A good first step is to add yourself with + Add person, then build outwards from there: your parents, your partner, your children. Starting from someone you know well makes everything else easier to place.

Every tree has a six-character join code, shown at the top of the tree page. Send it to relatives by message or email. They sign in to Tree Together, enter the code under Join a family tree on their dashboard, and the tree appears in their list.

Everyone who joins can view and edit the tree. To see who has joined, click Members in the toolbar. The list shows each member’s name, email address and whether they are the owner or an editor.

Anyone with the code can join, so share it only with family you trust. If a code has been shared more widely than you meant, the owner can click Regenerate code in the Members window. The old code stops working immediately, and people who have already joined keep their access.

Each person on the tree is shown as a card with three buttons:

• + Parents adds two parents above the person, already linked as partners and connected to them.
• + Partner adds a partner beside the person, joined by a partner line.
• + Child adds a child below the person. If the person already has a partner, the child is linked to both of them, and the child’s line branches from the dot on the partner line.

New people start with the name “New Person”. Click the pencil icon on their card to give them a real name.

The + Add person button in the toolbar adds someone who isn’t connected to anyone yet. Relationships are created with the buttons on a person’s card, and two people who are already on the tree can’t currently be linked to each other afterwards. So when you’re adding a relative of someone already on the tree, use the buttons on that person’s card rather than + Add person.

Click a person’s name to open their profile, showing their birth year and notes.

Click the pencil icon on their card to edit their name, birth year and notes. The notes field is the heart of a family tree: where someone grew up, what work they did, how they met their partner, the stories that get retold at every family gathering. A name tells you who someone was; a note tells you what they were like.

To remove someone, open the edit window and click Delete. Their links to parents, partners and children are removed too, so the rest of the tree stays tidy.

Drag any card to move it. Lines follow as you drag, and the position is saved automatically.

Your arrangement is saved just for you. Every member of a tree sees the same people and relationships, but each person can lay the tree out in the way that makes sense to them. Moving cards around never changes anyone else’s view.

Click Auto layout to tidy everything up in one go. It arranges the tree by generation, keeps partners side by side and spaces siblings so cards don’t overlap. The first time you open a tree, it’s laid out this way automatically.

Scroll or pinch to zoom, and drag an empty part of the canvas to move around a large tree.

The tree’s owner can also:

• Rename the tree by clicking its name at the top of the tree page.
• Regenerate the join code from the Members window.
• Delete the tree from the tree page or the dashboard. This permanently removes everyone in it for all members and can’t be undone.

• Give each branch a keeper. Ask one relative from each side of the family to fill in the people they know best. It’s quicker than one person chasing everyone for details.
• Start with the oldest relatives. Grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles often remember names and stories nobody else does. Sit with them, or call them, and add what they tell you as you go.
• Write down the stories, not just the dates. A birth year is useful; “walked to school barefoot and later ran the village shop” is what your children will remember.
• Use the original spellings. For families that have moved between countries, names are often spelled differently on different documents. Use the spelling the family uses, and put alternatives in the notes.
• Leave gaps rather than guessing. “Born around 1940” in the notes is more honest than a precise date nobody is sure of, and it invites someone who does know to correct it.
• Ask before adding living people’s details. Some relatives are happy to share everything; others prefer to keep things like birth years private.

My join code says it’s invalid. Codes are six characters and aren’t case-sensitive. If it still doesn’t work, the owner may have regenerated it; ask them for the current code.

I added someone, but they’re not connected to anyone. They were probably added with + Add person. Delete them and add them again from the relative’s card using + Child, + Partner or + Parents.

Someone moved people around and now my tree looks different. They can’t have: layouts are personal. If your cards look out of place, click Auto layout to tidy them.

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Still stuck? Email admin@silentmonkey.co.nz and we’ll help.