Getting started – Intro & Import (NVivo 14 Windows)

NVivo helps identify themes across data sources, and this tutorial shows how to import various file types and organize them for analysis.

Apr 1, 2026
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Getting started – Intro & Import (NVivo 14 Windows)

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Getting started – Intro & Import (NVivo 14 Windows)

This tutorial provides a quick overview of what NVivo does, then gets you started importing data.

What NVivo does

NVivo is a powerful qualitative analysis tool that lets you organize content so you can discover patterns in your data.

The easiest way to understand what NVivo does is to see what it replaces…

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Summary

NVivo allows you to identify themes within your data and collect all the content related to those themes, from all your data sources, together.

Importing data

Before you can code your data files you have to bring them into an NVivo project.

NOTE For interview or focus group transcripts and surveys, by following a few simple formatting rules you can autocode the files when they are imported into NVivo, saving a lot of time. See Autocode documents (NVivo 14 Windows) and Autocode datasets (NVivo 14 Windows).

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Summary

You can import Word documents, text files, PDFs, audio, video, images and emails into NVivo projects and organize them in folders. Use the Import tab, Files to import these file types, which are all stored under Data/Files in the Navigation View.

There are options to add metadata to the files you import. These are only offered, at import, for single files. They include file descriptions and file classification attributes.

Not shown in the video: you can also import surveys with open- and closed-ended questions, in a variety of formats.

Help links

Files (NVivo 14 Windows), Import & organize files (NVivo 14 Windows),

Next tutorial...Getting started – Organize (NVivo 14 Windows)

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NV14Win-Content-tutorials-tutorial-01-intro-import