Family Tree From spreadsheet

Hi @Brendan O, thanks for this post, and apologies for the confusion. Lucidchart uses the Org Chart tool in order to create family trees because they utilize the same rigid logical structure. You can follow the same instructions in the Create an org chart article from the Lucidchart help center - specifically, take a look at the “Import data” section to understand the information that Lucidchart will need in order to interpret the data. Essentially, you can consider an “employee” as a family member and a “supervisor” as a parent. 

For example, the org chart article contains this sample data set:

By comparison, your family tree data set might look like this:

Then, with Lucidchart when you import your data, you can specify the same:

I hope this helps! Give this a try and let me know if you have any additional questions. 

@Micah,

thanks for the reply. I am very familiar with how to use work charts. I actually have to use them every month for my company. What I don’t understand how to do in a family tree show someone’s spouse. It’s easy to show the child parent relationship, but I don’t know how to show someone’s spouse.  The example that you provided only shows parent children relationships. I don’t See where any spouses are added in the middle of the tree. Do you understand what I’m looking for? Do you have any suggestions on how to do that?

@Brendan O Thanks for getting back to me with that additional detail! Yes, I understand what you’re hoping to do with incorporating spouses, and I have a few suggestions for you:

If using the data import method I described above:

The org chart data import tool doesn’t support automatic definition and creation of marriage relationships; they would need to be added in and connected manually. To do this, it might be helpful to increase the horizontal spacing of your diagram, which would allow for more room to add in a spouse shape. To do that, simply select your org chart, then use the horizontal spacing slider under the Layout style menu. I’ve demonstrated this in the GIF below:

From there, you can add in and connect additional people shapes to represent marriage relationships.

Alternative option

If you’d prefer more flexibility with both the layout and shapes in your family tree, I would recommend starting with one of our family tree templates. While you won’t be able to import data to automatically build them, they’ll allow you more stylistic freedom. I’ve shared a few examples below, along with their names as they’re titled in the template gallery, below. 

I’ll note that this first one I’ve included is the only one that includes spouses by default, grouped together in a box, but a similar method could be used on any of the others. 

I hope this helps!

@Micah,

I like your first option.  I’ve got a huge family to enter, so just having add spouses should be manageable.  Once I add a spouse is there a way I can link them (their employee ID) to the spreadsheet?

@Brendan O I’m glad it sounds like that will work for you! You can certainly add spouse information (employee ID)  retroactively to the sheet and perhaps link them to others via a “spouse ID”, “father-in-law ID,” “mother-in-law ID,” etc. to ensure your spreadsheet is a complete data source. Note, however, that Lucidchart won’t be able to actually interpret those non-hierarchical relationships.