Use the NVivo Help

 


This topic explains the difference between offline and online Help and explains different ways you can find Help topics. It also explains how to print sections of the Help.

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Understand the difference between offline Help and online Help

NVivo comes with Help installed on your computer (offline Help) and allows you to access Help on the web (online help). By default, NVivo opens the online Help (if you have an Internet connection). If you are not connected to the Internet, NVivo opens the installed Help.

The online Help has the following advantages:

  • The online Help is updated from time-to-time—for example, when corrections are made to existing topics or new topics are added. The installed help is only updated when a service pack is released, so the online help is usually the most up-to-date version of the Help.

  • The online Help search supports both US and UK spelling of key terms—for example searching for 'colour' displays results for 'color'. The installed Help does not support alternate spellings of search terms.

  • A machine-translated version of the online help is available for each of the NVivo user interface languages—Chinese (Simplified Chinese), French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.

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How to open the Help

There are several different ways you can launch the Help. To open the Help, do any of the following:

  • Press F1

  • Click the File tab, click Help, and then click NVivo Help.

  • Click the Help icon in the upper right of the NVivo ribbon or any dialog box—when you open the Help from a dialog box, the relevant topic is displayed.

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Find relevant Help topics

When you first open the Help (unless you open it from a dialog box), the Help welcome page is displayed. You can use the links on this page to find relevant topics, or you can find topics by using the table of contents or the search function.

If you open the Help from a dialog box, the relevant topic is automatically displayed.

The following diagram shows some of the ways you can navigate the NVivo Help:

1  The pane on the left has three tabs. Click on the different tabs to access:

  • Contents—this is an expandable table of contents. Click on a book to expand it and see the topics inside. Click on a topic to open it.

  • Search—enter a word or phrase to find relevant topics. Click on a topic in the search results to open it.

  • Glossary—provides definitions of NVivo terms.

2  The pane on the right displays the Help topic. Related Help topics are listed at the end of each topic—click on the hyperlink to open the topic. You can also follow links within the topic itself to move from one topic to another.

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Help for the different editions of NVivo

There are three editions of NVivo 11 software: NVivo Starter, NVivo Pro and NVivo Plus. Each edition features a different level of functionality to support a range of projects and research needs.

The same NVivo Help covers each of the different editions. Where functionality is different between the editions, it is indicated in the Help.

Each Help topic includes a marker to indicate which editions the content applies to.

Within topics, some functions may only be available in certain editions—and this is clearly labelled.

Most of the graphics and images in the Help show the NVivo Pro edition, so they may not reflect the user interface of the edition you are using—for example, options on the ribbon may be different.

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Print the Help

You can print individual pages of the Help from either the offline or online versions of the Help. If you would like a printed copy of the Help, you can achieve this by printing each book (section) separately—this must be done from the offline version of the Help.

To print a book (section) of the Help:

  1. Open the offline Help—If you normally use online Help, you can launch the offline Help from the Start menu by clicking Start > All Programs > QSR > NVivo 11 > English > NVivo 11 Help.

  1. Click the Contents tab to show the table of contents.

  2. Click on the book that you want to print and then click the Print icon (or right-click on the book and then click Print).

  3. In the Print Topics dialog box, select Print the selected heading and all subtopics, and then click OK.

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Access machine-translated Help

A machine-translated version of the Help is available for each of the NVivo user interface languages—Chinese (Simplified Chinese), French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. This translation is provided by Google Translate.  

Translation is a complex task because the meaning of a word varies depending on the context in which it appears. Machine translation does not yet equal the quality of human translation, so you may notice translations that could be improved. Google Translate allows you to contribute a better translation—refer to the Google Translate Help for more information.

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