Reorder and refine nodes

Nodes express your growing understanding of the concepts and cases within your data. Your understanding of the nodes in your project may change over the course of your analysis. For example, you may want to simplify your node structure by merging nodes that have the same meaning.

What do you want to do?

Watch a video tutorial
Sort nodes
Copy nodes
Move nodes to a new parent or folder
Reorder nodes (within the same level of the hierarchy)
Merge one or more nodes into an existing node
Merge one or more nodes into a new node
Delete nodes

Watch a video tutorial

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Sort nodes

By default, nodes are organized alphanumerically in List View, but you can:

Sort the nodes based on a node property such as creation or modification date

To apply a sort order:

Click in the List View
On the Layout tab, in the Sort & Filter group, click Sort By, and then click a sort option.

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Copy nodes

In List View, click the required node.
On the Home tab in the Clipboard group, click Copy.

Keyboard shortcut To copy press ⌘+C

Click a destination node folder or parent node.
On Home tab in the Clipboard group, click Paste (⌘+V).

NOTE

When you copy a case or node, it retains its coding and annotations.
Cases lose their classification and attribute values if you copy them to the Nodes folder.
If the node already exists in the destination location, a number is appended to the name.

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Move nodes to a new parent or folder

To move nodes to a new folder or parent node, you can select them in List View and do one of the following:

Drag and drop the nodes in the required parent node or folder.
Copy the nodes and move them to a new location—on the menu bar, click Edit > Copy, then select the new location and (holding down the Option key) click Move Here.

NOTE

When you move a case or node, it retains its coding and annotations.
Cases lose their classification and attribute values if you move them to the Nodes folder.
If the node or case already exists in the destination location, a number is appended to the name.

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Reorder nodes (within the same level of the hierarchy)

By default, nodes are ordered alphanumerically in List View, but you can move nodes to create a 'custom' order:

This feature is not currently available in NVivo for Mac—for an overview of the features in this release, refer to the QSR website.

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Merge one or more nodes into an existing node

You can merge one or more nodes into another existing node. This can be a useful when two nodes have a similar meaning or content—for example, you could merge the nodes farming and cultivation into the node agriculture.

To merge one or more nodes into a 'target' node:

In List View, select the nodes that you want to merge into the target node.
On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click Copy.

In List View, select the target node.
On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click Merge, and then click Merge Into Selected Node.

Select options for merging:

Merge child nodes If the nodes being merged have child nodes, move the children to the target parent node.
Append linked memos Add the content of any linked memos to the end of the target's linked memo.

Click Merge.

NOTE

If you want to delete the original node once it has been merged, press the Option key when you click the Merge command, and then click Merge into Selected Node Removing Original.
If you merge a child node into a parent node that has aggregation turned on, NVivo will count the references twice (unless you delete the merged child node). Refer to Aggregate nodes (gather all content in a parent node) for more information about rolling content from child nodes up to the parent node.

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Merge one or more nodes into a new node

In List View, select the nodes that you want to merge into the target node.
On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click Copy.

Do one of the following:

To merge into a new node at the root level of a folder, select the folder in Navigation View, and then click in a blank area of the List View
To merge into a new child node, click the parent node for the new child node you are creating

On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click Merge, and then click Merge Into New Node or Merge Into New Child Node.

The Merge into Node dialog opens.

Select options for merging:

Merge child nodes If the nodes being merged have child nodes, move the children to the target parent node.
Append linked memos Add the content of any linked memos to the end of the target's linked memo.

Click Merge.

Enter a name (and optionally a description) for the new node and then click Done.

NOTE If you want to delete the original node once it has been merged, press the Option key when you click the Merge command, and then click Merge into New Node Removing Original or Merge into New Child Node Removing Original.

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Delete nodes

In List View, select the node you want to delete.
On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Delete.

Keyboard shortcut: To delete the selected item, press DELETE.

NOTE When you delete a node, coding at the node is removed from all sources in your project.

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