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Select several people

Select a group of people in order to edit, arrange, group, hide or delete them together.

1 min readChecked 16 October 2026Open in the editor

When two or more people are selected, the side panel shows the whole selection in place of a single person. It lists the people selected, and every change made in it applies to all of them. On the canvas, a dashed frame surrounds the selection and states how many people it contains.

Demonstration in the editor
This demonstration runs in the editor on a copy of a sample family. It does not change your own chart.

Procedure

  1. 1

    Hold ⇧ and click each person, or press B and drag a box around them.

  2. 2

    If someone was included by mistake, click the small cross beside their name in the panel.

  3. 3

    Click a row under Layers, such as Religion, to give everyone the same value. Every row except Occupation opens in this way.

  4. 4

    Click the eye beside a row to show or hide that line of text for the selected people only.

  5. 5

    Click a control at the foot of the panel to change the symbol size, to arrange or group the people, or to hide or delete them.

Tip

With exactly two people selected, the panel also offers Emotional relationship and Family link, which connect the pair.

Keyboard shortcuts

⇧click
Add a person to the selection, or remove a selected person from it.
B
Switch to Box select, and drag a box around people to select them.
⇧drag
Draw a selection box from an empty part of the canvas.
CtrlA
Select everyone on the canvas.
Esc
Clear the selection.