The Overview of Memos

The Overview of Memos provides a tabular view of all memos in your project, or a filtered selection from a specific document, document group, or document set.

• You can open the overview of all project memos by going to Memos > Overview of Memos in MAXQDA's main menu, see image below.
• Alternatively, you can compile all memos of a document, group, or set in the Document window by right-clicking the relevant row and choosing Memos from the "OVERVIEWS" section of the menu.

The overview window

Each memo appears as a row in the table. Clicking a row displays the memo content in the preview pane at the top of the window, so you can scroll through memos without opening individual memo windows.

The table columns provide key details about each memo, including:

• The name of the item the memo is attached to (for example, a document, group, set, or code).
• For memos attached to document segments, the paragraph number of the segment.
• The memo’s author.
• The date it was last edited.
• A preview of the memo text (the first 63 characters).
• The memo’s origin, indicating the type of memo (for example, “Code” for a code memo or “Document” for a document memo).

Memos cannot be edited directly in the preview panel. To edit a memo, double-click its row to open the memo window.

To delete a memo, select its row and either right-click and choose Delete Memo, or click the Delete icon in the toolbar. To delete multiple memos at once, use Cmd (macOS) / Ctrl (Windows) to select non-contiguous rows, or Shift to select a range, then right-click and choose Delete Memo or click the Delete icon.

Filtering the memo list

Filtering columns

Like all MAXQDA overviews, the Overview of Memos can be filtered by any column. Right-click a column header and select Set filter to apply a filter. This is particularly useful for isolating memos by type, author, or date.

For more information, see Filtering table overviews.

Using predefined filters

You can limit the scope:

Only activated documents - Lists only memos from documents that are activated in the Documents window.

Only activated documents - Lists only memos from codes that are activated in the Codes window.

The toolbar also includes a predefined filter dropdown for quickly narrowing the list by memo type, user, or other criteria. Options include code memos, document memos, free memos, memos by a specific user, as shown in the image below:

These filters work independently from the column filters described above.

Searching in the Overview of Memos

You can search the memo list in two ways, depending on what you need:

• Search within a specific column: Right-click a column header and select Search. Matches are highlighted immediately, and you can navigate between them using the up and down arrows. To include additional columns in the search, click the Choose search columns when you right-click.
• Search across all columns: Click the Search icon in the toolbar to activate the search bar. This automatically searches across all columns at once.

Jumping to the memo origin

The Overview of Memos is interactively linked to the locations where memos were created. Clicking a row navigates MAXQDA to that memo's origin:

• In-document memos — the source document opens in the Document Browser, positioned at the memo's location in the text.
• In-media memos — the media file is positioned at the corresponding point, but only if the Multimedia Browser is already open.
• Code memos — the relevant code is selected in the Codes window.
• Document memos — the relevant document is highlighted in the Documents window.

Creating a free memo

You can create a new free memo directly from the Overview of Memos toolbar using the New Free Memo icon.

When free memos are shown: Free memos appear in the Overview of Memos only when it is opened via Memos > Overview of Memos, from the Memo Manager, or by right-clicking the top entry in the Documents window.

Exporting memos

You can export all memos in the Overview of Memos using the export icon in the toolbar, and choosing between these options:

Open as Excel table — creates and opens an Excel file.

Open as HTML table — creates an HTML file and opens it in your default browser.

Export — exports as a Word file (DOCX) with memo texts as running text or as a table, or as an Excel file (XLSX), a web page (HTML), or other formats.

The entire table is exported by default, unless you have selected specific rows.