Genealogical table / Family tree

Tables are perfect for making a genealogical table or family tree. Consider how many rows and columns you will need. Easiest is to count from the most distant generation to determine how many rows you need. In this example, I go back 4 generations - one person and his mother and father, his grandmother and grandfather on both sides, and their parents. That makes a total of 4 columns and 8 rows.

I use a border color for all cells to make it easy to see what the tables look like. You can add a border color by right-clicking in a cell in the table, go to Cell and follow the arrow to Table Cell Properties. Go to Advanced and then check Border Color, second to last. After that, check "Update All Cells in Table".

Now it’s time to merge the cells so that two cells become one. Merge the two cells that are directly in front of Paternal great grandfather and Paternal great grandmother to create one single cell where you place Grandfather.

Select the 2 cells that you want to make into one, right-click and scroll down to Cell, follow the arrow and select Merge Table Cells at the bottom. Repeat for all the pairs that will become one in column 3, and write Paternal grandfather, Paternal grandmother, Maternal grandfather and Maternal grandmother.

Now we merge the cells that will become Father and Mother. Mark the 4 cells in front of Paternal grandfather and Paternal grandmother, merge them into one, and write Father. Repeat the procedure for Mother.

Now just merge all the cells in the first column for the person for whom the tree is created.

Our table is a bit cramped. In the below table, the width and height of the cells have been adjusted and the text aligned so that it appears in the middle of the cells.

Select all the cells and click on the Center button in the toolbar. Then right-click in one cell, scroll to Cell and follow the arrow to Table Cell Properties. Make sure you check Center in Vertical Alignment. Check "Update All Cells in Table” at the bottom to make sure that all text is in the middle of the cell.

Right-click in the Paternal Great Grandfather cell (one of the cells in the last column) and set the height. The cells in this example have a height of 30px. The setting only affects the last column since the other columns are merged and much higher than 30px. Do not forget to check “Update All Cells in Table”. This is a very practical setting.

Right-click in the "Paternal great grandfather" cell, select the width of the cell and then "Update all cells in the table". Why you choose this cell is because that column has the most cells. Then correct the other cells that should have antoher widht. The cells for Father, Mother and Child in this example have 60px. The width for Paternal grandfather is set to 100px. And the widht for Paternal great grandfather is set to 170px.

Let’s add a border around the table to frame everything. Right-click somewhere in the table and go to Table Properties (NOTE! Not the "Table Cell Properties" that we have used so far). Choose the size of your Border, go to Advanced and choose which Border Color you want to use. The frame in the example is 3px thick.