About NVivo

NVivo 12 Windows

In this topic

• What is NVivo?

• Understand NVivo editions

• Collaborating in NVivo

What is NVivo?

NVivo 12 Windows is a desktop application that is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. NVivo lets users organize, analyze and visualize information—anything from Word documents and PDFs to videos, podcasts, photos and database tables. Users can organize their material by topic and uncover trends and emerging themes. The visualization tools let them create diagrams, charts or maps to present and clarify their discoveries.

Users may store their work (the data they import or create, plus their analysis) as NVivo 12 Windows project (.nvp) files, or as NVivo Server projects if usingNVivo Server. Refer toData storage modelsfor more information.

For further information about using NVivo, refer to Other NVivo resources.

Understand NVivo editions

There are two editions of NVivo 12 Windows client software: Pro and Plus. Each edition features a different level of functionality to support a range of projects and research needs.

• NVivo Pro—A core set of features designed for research projects with text-based sources.

• NVivo Plus—All the functionality of NVivo Pro with an additional set of specialized tools to support large data sets and social network analysis.

The client license key determines the edition—if a user needs features that are available in another edition, they can upgrade their license key. Users with license keys that allow access to more than one edition can switch between them in Application Options.

Collaborating in NVivo

It is possible to collaborate in a standalone project stored locally or on a network drive. The simplest way for team members to collaborate on a standalone project, is to work with a single project file—however, only one user can open and work with the project at a time.

If your users need to work in a team on the same project, you should consider combining NVivo 12 Windows with NVivo Server. The NVivo Server allows concurrent multi-user access—this means that everyone in a team can work on the same project at the same time. Team members can code, annotate, and link source content at the same time.

Make sure that team members collaborating in a standalone project or a server project are using the same version of the NVivo software. If team members are not using the same version, they may not be able to use the same features.