Documents and PDFs (NVivo 15 Mac)

Import, view, and code Word docs or PDFs in NVivo 15; annotate, select text/images, use coding techniques, and convert scanned PDFs to codable text.

Apr 1, 2026
Knowledge

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Documents and PDFs (NVivo 15 Mac)

Answer

Documents and PDFs (NVivo 15 Mac)

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

Open the project you want to import the documents or PDFs into.
In the Navigation View, in the Data section, select the files folder that you want to import the files into.
On the Import tab, click Files and then Documents or PDFs.
Browse for and select the files you want to import.
Click Import.
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 (NVivo 15 Mac).
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

Open and navigate documents and PDFs

Double-click a document or PDF in the List View to open it in the Detail View.

Documents open in read-only mode. You can code, annotate and create links in this mode. To edit the document content, select Edit in the Detail View toolbar.

You cannot edit PDFs in NVivo.

To move around a document or PDF you can:

Use scroll bars to move up and down, or left and right
Find specific words or phrases (press ⌘+F)

PDF files can include bookmarks. Bookmarks are displayed in a pane on the left side of Detail View. Click on a bookmark to jump to a specific location in the PDF.

What can I do in a document or PDF?

As you read through a document or PDF, you can:

Code selected content to codes or cases
Record your thoughts and ideas by annotating selected content

The way you select content to code, annotate and link varies slightly between document and PDF files.

You can edit the content of documents (not PDFs):

Select Edit in the Detail View toolbar or context menu. The ribbon Edit tab is enabled for editing commands.
If your Mac has a Touch Bar, you can use the Edit button in it. You can also use the Touch Bar to bold, italicize and underline selected text.

You can hear a selected passage of text read aloud.

Selecting and coding content

Select and code content in documents

When you are working in a document, you can select and code text or images.

Coding text and images in a document.

1 Select portions of text—click and drag with the mouse to select the text you want to code.

2 Select entire images by double-clicking.

3 Select images or text contained within the table.

Once you've selected content to code there are several techniques to code it. Manual coding techniques (NVivo 15 Mac)

Select content in PDFs

When you are working in a PDF, you can select text or regions of a page.

Coding images and text in a PDF.

1 Select portions of text. You can also double-click to select a word and triple-click to select a line.

2 Select regions of a page. You can double-click to select an image and, if you switch to region mode, you can click and drag to select a region of the page. When you select a region, you are making an image selection, even if the region you select contains text.

To switch between text and region selection—select a Selection Modefrom the top of the Detail View.

Once you've selected content to code there are several techniques to code it. Manual coding techniques (NVivo 15 Mac)

NOTE

PDFs created by scanning may contain only images—each page is a single image. You are unable to select text in these files. You can select and code page regions, however the selection is effectively an image and you cannot use text search or word frequency queries on it.
If you prefer to work with text (rather than images of text), you can try the Recognize Text feature (see Turning a scanned document into codable text below).
When in region mode, you can show/hide the region coordinates using the shortcut ⌘+OPTION+C
NVivo tries to determine the order of text on a PDF page, however when you select text, you may find that the text on the page is not sequenced as you expect.

Turning a scanned document into codable text

If you cannot select the text in a PDF it is probably because the PDF was created by scanning a paper document—the text is effectively part of an image and isn't recognized as text.

Depending on the PDF, you may be able to use 'Recognize Text' to turn the text into content that you can select, code and query.

This feature works best on documents that have:

Black type on a white background (not handwritten)
Simple and consistent formatting (no columns)

To use text recognition:

Open the PDF in the Detail View.
Click Recognize Text at the top of the Detail View. The button is disabled if the PDF already contains codable text.
In the preview window, select a section of text. A pop-up is displayed showing the results of text recognition.
Assess the accuracy of the text:
- If the text looks good, click Update PDF to save the PDF with codable text.
- If the text does not accurately represent the content, click Cancel to keep the PDF in its original state.

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