Working with Comments and Memos

Writing a Comment

You find a field for writing comments in every Entity Manager.

To write a comment, select an item and type something in to the comment field in the inspector. As soon as you select another item, the comment is automatically saved.
All items that have a comment display a yellow post-it within their icon.

Alternatively, you can right-click on any entity and select the Edit Comment option from the context menu and write a comment for the selected entity.

Memo Manager

Creating Memos

Memos can be created from the toolbar, or in the Memo Manager.

To create a memo from the toolbar:

Click the drop-down menu for Memos and select New Memo. A new memo opens immediately, and you can change the default name in the inspector.

To create a memo in the Memo Manager

From the main menu select Memo > Show Memo Manager.
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In the Memo Manager, click on the plus. A new memo is created in the list, and you can enter a title. You can begin to write your memo in the editor in the lower part of the Memo Manager.

Opening an Exis

You can access memos from everywhere: the Project Explorer, the Memo Manager, in the margin area if you linked a memo to a quotation, or from within a network.

If you want to review or continue to work on a memo, just double-click the memo. In the Memo Manager, you can select a memo with a single click and review and edit it in the lower part of the manager window.

Adding a Quotation to a Memo

You can copy and paste quotations into a memo. This is for example useful if you want to include key quotes in your report.

Select a quotation, right-click and select Copy from the context menu, ir the short-cut cmd+c.

Paste the quotation in the memo editor, either using the short-cut cmd+v, or the context menu option. The quotation will be pasted into the memo including its reference, i.e., document name and location within in the document.

Copy quotation content into an editor

You can also copy and paste a quotation including its reference into any text editor, also outside of ATLAS.ti.

Link

Memos can be linked to quotations, codes and other memos. You can link memos per drag & drop basically anywhere in the program, or visually in networks. See Linking Nodes. Below a few examples are given.

Linking Memos to Quotations

The following options are available:

  • Drag & Drop a memo from the Project Explorer or Memo Manager onto a highlighted quotation, or on a quotation in the margin area. You can also drag the quotation to the memo.

  • Drag & Drop a memo from the Project Explorer or Memo Manager to a quotation in a result list (or vice versa). This can be a result list in the query tool, the Code Document Table, Code Co-occurrence Table, or results from a project search.

  • Drag & Drop a memo from the Project Explorer or the Memo Manager to a quotation in the Quotation Manager (or vice versa).

  • Link a memo to a quotation (or vice versa) in a network. See Linking Nodes.

Memo Link

Reviewing Quotations Linked to a Memo

To review all quotations linked to a memo, right-click and select Open Quotations. This opens the Quotation Reader.
You can also see the quotations linked to a memo in the inspector, or by opening the memo subtree in the Project Explorer.

Linking Memos

The following options are available:

  • Drag & Drop a memo from the Project Explorer or Memo Manager onto a code in the margin area. You can also drag a code to the memo.

  • Drag & Drop a memo from the memo branch in the Project Explorer or the Memo Manager to the code branch in the Project Explorer (or vice versa).

  • Drag & Drop a memo from the Memo Manager to a code in the Code Manager (or vice versa).

  • Link a memo to a code (or vice versa) in a network. See Linking Nodes.

Linking Memos to Memos

The following options are available:

  • Drag & Drop a memo to another memo in the margin area.

  • Drag & Drop a memo to another memo in the memo branch of the Project Explorer.

  • Drag & Drop a memo to another memo in the Memo Manager.

  • Link a memo to a memo in a network. See Linking Nodes.

Converting a Memo into a Document

As a lot of the analysis happens while you write memos, in some cases you may wish to convert a memo into a document as secondary data so that you can code it.

Select a memo in the Project Explorer or the Memo Manager, right-click and select Convert Memo to Document from the context menu. If a memo is open, you can also select the main menu option: Memo > Convert Memo to Document.

The memo is then added to your list of documents.

You can continue to use the memo as memo. The memo comment is not transferred. It is treated independently of the comment that you may want to write for the memo document.