Text search (NVivo 14 Mac)

Text searches let you search for words or phrases in your project items.

• Explore the use, context and meaning of words—are some expressions used more widely in a specific demographic?
• See if an idea or topic is prevalent in your files—useful in the early stages of your project.
• Automatically code words or phrases. For example, find each occurrence of solar or wind power and code them (and the selected context around them) to the code renewable energy.

Before you run a text search, make sure the text content language is set to the language of your files. Text content language & stop words (NVivo 14 Mac)

Run a text search

1. On the Explore tab, click Text Search.
   
2. Choose where you want to search for matching text:
   • Files and Externals—search for content in all the files and externals in your project
   • Selected Items—restrict your search to selected items (for example, a set containing interview transcripts)
   • Items in Selected Folders—restrict your search to content in selected folders (for example, a folder of interview transcripts)
3. In the Search for box, enter the word or phrase that you want to search for. If you want an exact phrase enclose it in double quotation marks ("). Operators & special characters (NVivo 14 Mac)
4. (Optional) Use the options on the Special popup menu to combine multiple words with special characters and operators.
5. (Optional) Under Finding matches, select Include stemmed words if you want to include words with the same stem (e.g. look for 'talk' and also find 'talking'). 
6. Click the Run Query button at the top of Detail View.

You can run text searches from the Query Wizard or using the dedicated text search function—both offer the same options, but presented in slightly different format.

1. On the Explore tab click Text Search or Query Wizard.
   If using the wizard, click See where particular terms occur in content on the first page.
2. In the Search for box, enter the word or phrase that you want to search for.
   To search for an exact phrase enclose it in double quotation marks (") or click Special to combine multiple words with special characters and operators (see Operators & special characters (NVivo 14 Mac)).
3. Select a Find option:
   1. exact matches only
   2. exact matches plus words with the same stem—e.g. find farming and farmed when you search for farm
   3. all the above, plus synonyms (words with the same meaning)
   4. all the above, plus specializations—i.e. words for examples of the search term, e.g for farm, land and produce are specializations
   5. all the above, plus generalizations—i.e. categories that the search term belongs to, e.g agriculture is a generalization of farming.
4. Select to search text in all your files, or restrict it to selected items or folders.
   • Files and Externals—search for content in all the files and externals in your project
   • Selected Items—restrict your search to selected items (for example, a set containing interview transcripts)
   • Selected Folders—restrict your search to content in selected folders (for example, a folder of interview transcripts)
5. Run the query:

   • Save query criteria—you can save query criteria (i.e. your configuration settings) so you can run an identical query at a later time. In the wizard, set this up before you run the query, or after in the text search function. The settings are saved under Queries / Query Criteria in the Navigation View.

   • Save query results—in both the wizard and text search function you can save the results of the query.

When the query has finished running, the results are displayed in the Detail View.

What text is included in a text search?

When running a text search, NVivo applies the following rules:

• In audio and video transcripts, only the Transcript field (column) is searched—the Speaker field is ignored. In datasets, only codable fields (columns) are included—classifying fields are ignored.

Text searches do not find:

• Stop words associated with the text content language, unless the word is between words within a search phrase or the text content language is Chinese or Japanese. Stop words are less significant words, such as conjunctions and prepositions. You can edit the list of stop words to suit the content of your files. Text content language & stop words (NVivo 14 Mac)
• Symbols or punctuation.
• Parts of words—except if the text language is Chinese or Japanese.
• Words within images. PDFs created by scanning paper documents may contain only images—each page is a single image. If you want to use Text Search queries to explore the text in these PDFs, then you should consider using optical character recognition (OCR) to convert the scanned images to text (before you import the PDF files into NVivo).

Preview the results

When you run a Text Search query, by default, the Summary tab is in focus showing a list of all files that contain the word or phrase.

Click the panes across the top to see:

• Reference The results are opened as a code preview and the word or phrase is shown with a narrow context. You can also expand the context around a reference.
• Word Tree Displays the results as a tree with branches representing the various contexts in which the word or phrase occurs. You may be able to find recurring themes or phrases that surround the word.



When you view the results as a Word Tree, you can:

• Click a branch to highlight all of the other related branches to see the wider context.
• Change the number of words that are displayed in the branches—Drag the Context (words) slider to increase or decrease the number of words.
• Find the project item where a particular occurrence of the word is used—right-click on a branch to see the short-cut menu, then click Run Text Search Query.  

• Click the expand icon (in the top right of the Detail View) to expand the Detail View and create more space to work. See Customize the workspace (NVivo 14 Mac)

Save the results as a code

If your query has returned interesting content, you may want to save it as a code, so that you can explore it further. Saving the results of Text Search queries as codes can be a quick way of organizing your material into broad themes.

The code will contain the content that is displayed on the Reference tab in the query results in Detail View. If you repeatedly run the same query, you may want to merge the references into an existing code, rather than create them as a new code.

1. Click the Save Results button at the top of Detail View.
2. If you are creating a new code, enter a name and description.
3. Click Save Results.

NOTES

• By default new codes are created in the Results folder, unless you choose another location. Manage query results (NVivo 14 Mac)
• If you save the results as a code hierarchy, relevant content from each file is coded to a separate code, under a parent code.
• You can run the query and save the results in a single operation using the secondary click—for example, hold down the Control key and click Run Query, then click Run and Save Results....