Family Tree Templates for PowerPoint (Free)

PowerPoint is a better family tree tool than its reputation suggests, for one reason: it is a free-form canvas with real connectors. You can put a box anywhere, join it to another, and the join survives when you drag the box. Word fights you for that; PowerPoint does not. There is one significant trap, though, and it catches almost everybody — SmartArt cannot show two parents joining. Understanding that in the first five minutes rather than the fortieth is the difference between a finished chart and an abandoned file. This page covers the setup to fix first, both build routes, and how to get it out at printable quality. To name any relationship as you go, use the cousin calculator.

Fix the slide before you place anything

Two minutes that prevents a rebuild.

Change the slide size first. PowerPoint defaults to 16:9 widescreen, which is a screen shape, not a paper shape. If the chart is going to be printed, set the slide to A4 or Letter — or a custom size such as A3 — under the design and slide-size options.

Do it before placing content. Resizing afterwards rescales and distorts everything already on the slide, and text boxes rarely recover cleanly.

Choose landscape. Family trees are wider than they are tall, essentially always.

Turn on the guides and the grid, and enable snapping. Alignment is most of what makes a hand-built chart look designed rather than assembled.

Set your fonts and colors in the slide master if the tree will run to several slides, so a later change does not mean editing forty boxes.

And keep it in one file per family, with the branches on separate slides rather than in separate documents.

The SmartArt route, and its hard limit

The quick way, and exactly where it stops.

Insert a SmartArt graphic and choose a hierarchy layout. Type into the text pane, use Tab to demote a name a level and Shift-Tab to promote it, and the diagram builds and re-balances itself as you go.

It is genuinely fast — a three-generation descendant chart in about ten minutes, formatted consistently, with no drawing at all.

But SmartArt is a strict single-parent hierarchy. Every node has exactly one parent above it. There is no way to draw two boxes joining into a marriage line and children descending from the union. That is the whole shape of a family tree, and SmartArt cannot express it.

The usual workaround is one box per couple: "John Hart & Mary Doyle, m. 1948", with their children beneath. It works well, and it is honest — but it hides one line of every couple, which matters if you are tracing a maternal surname.

So SmartArt suits descendant charts from a single ancestral couple, and organisational-style diagrams. It does not suit a pedigree chart running back through both parents' lines.

You can convert SmartArt to shapes — right-click and convert — which gives you an editable drawing you can then fix by hand. That is a reasonable middle path: let SmartArt do the layout, then break it apart and add the marriage lines.

Building it by hand

The route that handles real families, and it is not as slow as it sounds.

Make one box exactly how you want it — size, fill, border, font, text alignment — then copy and paste it for every person. Consistency for free.

Set it as the default shape. Right-click your finished box and set it as the default, and every new shape inherits the formatting.

Use connectors, not lines. This is the single most important technique on this page. Draw an elbow connector and attach each end to one of the small handles that appear on a shape when you hover over it. A properly attached connector turns green at the endpoint and stays attached when you drag the box. A plain line drawn near a shape does not, and a chart built from plain lines falls apart the first time you rearrange it.

Draw marriage lines first. A short horizontal connector between two people, then a vertical connector dropping from its midpoint to the children's row. Children hang from the union, never from one parent alone.

Use the alignment tools — align top, distribute horizontally — on each generation row. Eyeballing is what makes home-made charts look home-made.

Group each family unit once it is right, so it moves as one object.

And use the Selection Pane to find and name objects once the slide gets crowded. Naming the boxes after the people saves real time on a large chart.

Which route suits what

The honest summary: SmartArt for speed and simple shapes, hand-drawn for anything resembling a real family. The wider format comparison is in family tree chart types.

When it does not fit on one slide

The point at which most PowerPoint trees are abandoned.

Do not shrink the text. Below about 10pt a printed chart stops being readable, and shrinking is the first move almost everyone makes.

Split by branch instead. One slide per grandparent line, each readable, with a small overview chart on the first slide showing how the branches relate.

Or enlarge the slide. A custom slide size of A2 or larger exports to PDF perfectly well and can be printed at a copy shop.

Drop the boxes on the widest rows and use names on short rules instead. It buys a surprising amount of horizontal room.

Abbreviate dates to years. "b. 1943" rather than the full date roughly halves box width.

And put the largest sibling group in the middle of the slide rather than at an edge — the scaling strategies in full are in family tree templates for large families.

Mistakes worth avoiding

The ones that cost an evening each.

Typing directly onto the slide instead of into shapes. Loose text boxes drift, do not group, and cannot be connected. Every person should be a shape.

Drawing plain lines instead of connectors. The chart looks identical until the first time you move something, and then it is scrap.

Formatting each box individually. Forty boxes formatted by hand will not match, and changing your mind means forty edits. Set a default shape once.

Leaving the slide at 16:9 and discovering it at the printer.

Using the animation and 3D effects. Bevels, shadows and gradients look dated immediately and hurt legibility at small sizes. Flat fills and a thin border age far better.

Putting one enormous tree on one slide when two clear slides would read better.

Not saving a version before a big rearrangement. Save a copy first — PowerPoint's undo will not survive a crash mid-restructure.

Getting it out at printable quality

The last step, where quality is usually lost.

Export to PDF for anything being printed. It keeps the text as vector, so it stays sharp at any size.

Save as PNG at high resolution if you need an image. PowerPoint's default image export is low resolution; use the largest option available, or export the PDF and convert it.

Never screenshot the slide. A screenshot is your monitor's resolution, which is far below print quality.

Check the printable area. Printers cannot print to the paper edge, so keep a margin of at least 10 mm inside the slide boundary or the outer boxes will be clipped.

Print one draft copy early. Errors are visible on paper that are invisible on screen, reliably.

And keep the editable file, clearly named, alongside the exported PDF. The PDF is what gets shared; the .pptx is what you can still fix.

How it compares to the alternatives

Choosing the right application first saves the most time of all.

Word is better for a form-like chart with lines to write on, and worse for anything freely arranged — the approach is in family tree template in Word.

Excel is better for data — a hundred people with dates, places and sources, sortable — and poor at drawing, which is covered in family tree template in Excel.

Google Docs and Slides win when several relatives are contributing at once, and the shared-editing route is in family tree template in Google Docs.

Genealogy software wins the moment you need sources, consistency checking or GEDCOM export.

And a printed blank chart beats all of them if you simply want something to fill in by hand at a kitchen table — those are in printable family tree.

PowerPoint's niche is specific and real: a good-looking one-off chart, arranged exactly how you want it, that you can keep editing and print large.

FAQ

Does PowerPoint have a family tree template?

Not a dedicated one, but the SmartArt hierarchy layouts work as a ready-made descendant chart, and the shape-and-connector tools handle a full family tree. Set the slide size to your paper before you start either way.

Why can I not join two parents in SmartArt?

SmartArt hierarchies allow each node exactly one parent, so a marriage line joining two boxes is not possible. The usual fix is one box per couple, or converting the SmartArt to shapes and drawing the marriage lines by hand.

How do I make the lines stay attached to the boxes?

Use elbow connectors and attach each end to a shape's connection handle rather than drawing a plain line nearby. A properly attached connector moves with the box; a plain line does not.

What slide size should I use?

The paper you intend to print on — A4, Letter, or a custom A3 for a bigger chart — in landscape, set before you place any content. Resizing afterwards distorts everything already on the slide.

How do I print a large family tree from PowerPoint?

Set a large custom slide size, export to PDF so the text stays vector-sharp, and print at a copy shop. Keep at least a 10 mm margin inside the slide edge, because printers cannot reach the paper edge.

Is PowerPoint or Word better for a family tree?

PowerPoint, in most cases. It is a free-form canvas with connectors that stay attached to shapes, where Word's layout keeps reflowing around text. Word is better only for a fill-in-by-hand form.

Set the page, then use connectors

PowerPoint makes a genuinely good family tree once two things are settled. Change the slide size to your printing paper, in landscape, before placing a single box — resizing later distorts everything. Then decide the route honestly: SmartArt is quick and tidy but cannot join two parents, so it suits descendant charts from one couple; anything with marriages, remarriages or a pedigree back through both lines needs shapes drawn by hand. When you draw, use elbow connectors attached to the shapes' own handles so the chart survives being rearranged, draw the marriage lines before the children, and align each generation with the alignment tools rather than by eye. Export to PDF for printing, never a screenshot. And use the cousin calculator whenever a label on the chart is not obvious.