Documents and PDFs (NVivo 15 Windows)

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

Title

Documents and PDFs (NVivo 15 Windows)

Answer

Documents and PDFs (NVivo 15 Windows)

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, Evernote, 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.
Browse for and select the files you want to import.
Click Open.
In the Import Files dialog box, optionally select Create a case for each imported file. (This is useful if you have one file per case—if you are not sure, you can do this later Set up cases from interviews ). 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 Windows).
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 > [File type] Properties).

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.
If your Word documents are structured (for example, question and answer interviews), you can apply paragraph styles then use autocoding. Autocode documents (NVivo 15 Windows)

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
Use 'Go To' to quickly jump to a location. You can go to a specific see-also link or annotation, a page (PDFs only), a paragraph (documents only) or character position (documents only)
Find specific words or phrases (press CTRL+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
Make connections to other files by adding see-also links to 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.

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, link or annotate. You can also double-click to select a word and triple-click to select a paragraph.

2 Select entire images—you cannot select regions of the image.

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 Windows)

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. If you switch to region selection, you can click on an image to select it, or 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—on the Detail View toolbar select Text or Region.

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

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.
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.

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