The main MAXQDA menu includes the following menus:

Project Menu

In the Project menu, you can choose to create a new project, open an existing project, or complete other project management functions like printing, exporting, and importing. This makes it possible, for example, to print out the “Document System,” the “Code System,” the “Retrieved Segments” window, and the currently opened document in the “Document Browser.” You can also change the user name or access the admin settings for teamwork options on a project.

View Menu

This menu allows you to hide or view each of the four main MAXQDA work area windows. Furthermore, you can open the Screen Layout Manager to arrange the four main windows.

The MAXQDA toolbars can be turned on or off in this menu. After turning on a toolbar, you can move the toolbar around, freely placing it anywhere on your screen. If a toolbar is closed and then opened again, it will reappear where it had last been placed.

Documents Menu

In this menu, you can import documents, create a new document group, or a new document. A special function also allows you to import structured document forms. Furthermore, you can import data from Twitter, SurveyMonkey and MAXQDA’s Web Collector as well as focus group transcripts.

The document shown in the “Document Browser” can also be printed or exported, and the “Overview of links” can be called up.

Codes Menu                                                                     

This menu offers functions that connect to your codes, and some of the functions can also be accessed by right-clicking in the “Code System” window.

The available functions allow you to create a new code, view an overview of code frequencies, or create a complete index of all codes assigned to all document segments.

You also have the option of printing the “Code System,” importing or exporting the “Code System.” The list of all coded segments can be printed or exported.

Variables Menu                                                                                         

The variables menu allows you to create, edit, and set values for document variables, as well as switch between the various variable views. You can also import or export variables from this menu and call up code variables.

You will also have access to MAXQDA's Statistics and Graphics functions, which can be called up for both document and code variables.

Analysis Menu

This menu offers options related to the lexical search and retrieval functions for coded segments (called “Coding Query”). Furthermore, you can access the functions to create and display summaries for coded segments.

The Analysis menu also offers access to the intercoder agreement functions and the memo functions, especially the “Overview of memos” window. This overview includes all memos (document memos, document group memos, code memos, in media memos, and free memos) and can be filtered for various criteria.

Mixed Methods Menu

This menu includes various functions for the combination of qualitative and quantitative data using documents and variables. The activation via variables allows you to activate documents or document groups based on their assigned variable values, thereby limiting the retrievals to certain document segments. The Quote Matrix and Crosstabs functions are different visualizations that show connections between coded segments and selected variables or variable categories. The Typology Table is similar and shows percentages and/or mean values and standard deviations for qualitatively-designed typologies.

Visual Tools Menu

This menu offers several visualization function options: MAXMaps, the tool for qualitative modeling; the Code Matrix Browser (documents by codes); the Code Relations Browser (code co-occurrence); and the Document Comparison Chart are all for numerous or all of your documents; and the Document Portrait and Codeline visualizations apply only to one document at a time, which means that they can only be selected when an appropriate document is opened in the “Document Browser”; the tag cloud vizualises the 50 most-frequent words of all text, PDF and table documents and can be adjusted with a stop list.

Stats Menu (optional)

This menu is only available if you are running a license for “MAXQDA Analytics Pro”. “Stats” is a module, which offers frequently used descriptives and inferential statistic functions, like frequency tables, crosstabs, one-way analysis of variance, correlation and creating scales.

MAXDictio Menu (optional)

This menu is only available if you are running a license for “MAXQDA Plus” or “MAXQDA Analytics Pro”. “MAXDictio” is a module, which offers many functions for word frequencies, word combinations, and other tools for text exploration as well as quantitative content analysis based on a dictionary.

Help Menu

Here you will find the Getting Started Guide in PDF format, which may be helpful to print out. You will also find detailed help and links to the online and video tutorials, which give you a quick introduction to the program. You can also search for an update and download the update if you don’t have the most recent version.