How to connect metadata

Who this article is for: 

Anyone using ATLAS.ti who is working with primary data (such as interview transcripts) and needs to organize participant information.

Do you want  to link demographic or background data to each participant and compare them by characteristics such as age, region, or gender? Or do you have metadata in a spreadsheet that you would like to incorporate into your project? Integrate information about your participants via document comments, memos, and groups.

Option 1: Add metadata using Document Comments 

If you have one document for each participant (e.g., interview transcripts), this is the simplest way to manually store background information for each participant. You can add details such as age, gender, occupation, location, or any other relevant participant notes.

In ATLAS.ti Desktop (Windows and Mac):

You can add comments anywhere you interact with your document, for example:

1. From the side panel:
   1. Right-click on the document.
   2. Select Edit Comment.
   3. Enter the participant’s metadata in the comment field.
   4. Save your changes.

2. From the document:

• Open the document.
• Click in the comment field in the side panel.
• Enter your comment.

In ATLAS.ti Web:

You can add comments in two ways:

1. From the document:

• Open the document.
• Click the three dots (⋯) in the top right corner.
• Enter your comment in the available field.

2. From the Document Manager:

• Open the Document Manager.
• Select the document.
• Enter your comment in the available field in the side panel.

Option 2: Use memos linked to documents 

You can create one memo per participant and link it to their transcript. This is helpful if you need longer background descriptions, want structured participant profiles, or prefer keeping metadata separate from the transcript. (Please note: Linking memos to documents is available on ATLAS.ti Windows and Mac but not on Web.)

In ATLAS.ti Desktop (Windows and Mac):

1. Create a new memo and give it a descriptive title (for example, “Participant 01 – Background”).
2. Enter the participant’s metadata in the memo.
3. Link the memo to the corresponding participant document(s) (e.g., their interview transcript) by dragging and dropping: Drag the memo from the left-side panel to a document in the left-side panel, or a document in the Document Manager.

Option 3: Use Document Groups 

Document Groups are ideal if you want to compare participants by age range, group them by characteristics such as gender or region, or filter documents during your analysis.

Examples of document groups:

• “Age 20–25”
• “Urban participants”
• “Female participants”

You can assign a document to multiple groups, making this method especially powerful for comparative analyses.

In ATLAS.ti Windows or Mac:

1. Open the Document Manager.
2. Select the documents (use Ctrl/Cmd or Shift to select multiple documents).
3. Drag and drop the selected documents into the left-side panel.
4. Enter a group name.
5. Add documents to an existing group by dragging and dropping them into a group

In ATLAS.ti Web:

1. In the Document Manager, click on the three dots in the top-right corner and select Groups from the drop-down menu.
2. Enter the name(s) of your document group(s) and click the "+" button

3. From the Document Manager, select one or more documents using the checkboxes.
4. Click the three dots at the bottom of the screen.
5. Choose Add to Group and select the target group.

Option 4: Use the Survey Import Tool

If you already have participant data in a spreadsheet, the Survey Import Tool is the most efficient and scalable option. Each row in your file becomes a separate document, and descriptive information or answers to multiple choice questions can be automatically used to organize documents into groups. This approach provides maximum flexibility for demographic comparisons, filtering by multiple variables, and mixed-method analysis.

In ATLAS.ti Windows or Mac:

1. Select the Import Survey option
   1. In Windows, go to the Import & Export tab

b. In Mac, go to the Document menu > Import

2. Select your Excel file and click Open.
3. Follow the import wizard to define how each column should be handled (for example, what information should be used to organize document groups and what information should be added as coded content of each document).

In ATLAS.ti Web:

1. Click Add Document.
2. Select CSV Survey Data.
3. Upload a CSV (.csv) file (save or export your Excel file as CSV first).

4. Choose which columns (questions) and rows (responses) to import. Each row will become a separate document.
   1. If the goal is to keep all attributes within the same document, the Survey tool works well. However, if you need to organize documents into document groups, this has to be done manually in ATLAS.ti Web. You can auto-code for each participant's attributes and then filter by that code to create document groups accordingly.

Option 5: Use the Document Groups Import Tool

If you are using ATLAS.ti Desktop (Windows or Mac), you can also automatically organize documents into groups using the Import/Export Document Groups Tool. You can use an Excel spreadsheet (one you already created or one you export from ATLAS.ti) to assign existing documents to document groups.

In ATLAS.ti Windows or Mac:

1. The easiest way to prepare the Document Groups table is to first Export a table from ATLAS.ti Windows or Mac:
   1. In ATLAS.ti Windows, go the Import & Export tab, then click the Document Groups button with the up arrow

b. In ATLAS.ti Mac, go to the menu Document > Export > Document Groups

2. Add each piece of participant metadata as a column header
   1. First column: document name
   2. Second and subsequent columns: document groups or document attributes
3. Fill out the table, indicating whether a document belongs to a group or which value corresponds to each document:
   1. If there are multiple values for an attribute, add the prefix #
      1. For example, you might have a column header "#Location", and the cells below can indicate "USA", "UK", and so on
      2. If two or more values of the same attribute apply to the document, then enter the values separated by a coma
   2. If an attribute is simply yes/no, add a 1 in the cells below to indicate whether a document belongs to that group
      1. You do not need to add a prefix if the document attribute is dichotomous
      2. If there is no entry in a cell, the document is not assigned to a group

4. Save your Excel file and close it
5. Import the table
   1. In ATLAS.ti Windows, go the Import & Export tab, then click the Document Groups button with the down arrow

b. In ATLAS.ti Mac, go to the menu Document > Import > Document Groups

4. Select your Excel file
   1. If you want to add new groups even though a few groups already exist, you can proceed as described. Just leave existing groups in the table. ATLAS.ti will recognize them and does not create them anew.

Option 6: Code participants and their attributes

If you have data from multiple participants in a single document (e.g., a focus group discussion), you can connect metadata by coding each interviewee and their attributes. This approach is especially useful when you want to analyze patterns across participants, because coded segments can easily be retrieved and compared using Code Co-occurrence Analysis.

Examples of participant-related codes include:

• Participant 01
• Participant 02
• Age: 20–25
• Age: 25-30
• Location: USA
• Location: UK

In ATLAS.ti Desktop (Windows and Mac):

Use the Focus Group Coding Tool (please note: The Focus Group Coding Tool is only available in ATLAS.ti Windows and Mac). The Focus Group Coding Tool helps you quickly assign codes to different speakers in interview or focus group transcripts:

1. Ensure the speakers in the document are consistently labeled (for example: Interviewer, Participant 1, Participant 2).
2. Right-click the document and select Focus Group Coding.

3. Tell ATLAS.ti how your participants are identified (for example, with a : or @)
4. Deselect all finds that are not speakers, if any.
5. Check the suggested codes and modify the names if desired.
6. Add additional codes (e.g age, gender, etc), if you want to code the speaker units with multiple codes. Each code needs to by separated by a semicolon.

7. Click on the button Code.

Common issues and mistakes

• Unsupported file format
  • Windows and Mac support only Excel files (.xlsx)
  • Web supports only CSV files (.csv)
• Files not structured correctly
  • If the spreadsheet is not prepared according to the recommended workflow (for example, one row per participant with clear column headers), the Survey Import or Document Groups Import may fail or produce unexpected results.
  • If participants are not consistently identified in a document with multiple participants, the Focus Group Coding Tool will not identify all instances in which each person spoke.

When to contact support

Contact ATLAS.ti Support if:

• Your file fails to import, even though it is in a supported format
• You receive an error message during any of the processes outlined above
• You are unsure which metadata setup is best suited to your workflow

• The exact error message 
• Your platform and version (Windows, Mac, or Web).
• A sample of the file(s) you are working with
• A brief description of what you expected to happen and what happened instead