Documents and PDFs

When gathering your files, you may want to import:

  • Word documents (or text files)—these might be interview transcripts, field notes or group discussions
  • PDF files—these might be published reports, articles, or a collection of scanned documents

You can also create new, empty documents in NVivo and type up your content—for example, you could type up your field notes.

Documents can be moved into the Memos folder—for example, if you import a document that contains your ideas, observations or notes about the progress of the project, you may want to store it as a memo under the Memos system folder. You cannot move PDF files into the memos folder.

If you import content from OneNote or EndNote, then document or PDF files may be created in the process.

You can use NCapture to gather files from the web and then bring the web content into NVivo as PDFs. The captured web content is stored in an NCapture file (.nvcx) on your computer, and is converted to a PDF when you import it into NVivo.

Import documents and PDFs

  1. Open the project you want to import the documents or PDFs into.
  2. In the Navigation View, in the Data section, select the files folder that you want to import the files into.
  3. On the Import tab, click Files and then Documents or PDFs.
  4. Browse for and select the files you want to import.
  5. Click Import.
  6. If only 1 file is being imported, the Properties dialog box for the file opens. Optionally change the file name, add a description and color for the file, and assign a file classification and attribute values Classify files.
    If you are importing multiple files, they are imported immediately. You can set can configure parameters for each file individually if required (Home tab, Item > Get Info).

NOTE

  • If an entire document or PDF relates to a single case, you can code the entire file to the case—on the Home tab open the Code menu.
  • You cannot import password-protected Word documents.
  • You can print files as PDFs directly to NVivo from other applications (e.g. Pages) on your machine. In NVivo, open the project you want to import the PDF into. In the other app's print dialog box, click the PDF dropdown and select Add PDF to NVivo. The file is imported into the NVivo project directly.


Work with documents and PDFs

Selecting and coding content