Add documents to the library

Your documents live in the same library as your manuals. You can add one file or many at a time, and Sopycat keeps the file you added untouched. Every change you make later is saved as a new version beside it.

Ways to add a document

• Add a document on the Documents page or a folder's page, or at the bottom of the sidebar. You can pick several files at once.
• Drag files from Windows Explorer onto the Sopycat window.
• On a tool's page, such as Edit a PDF or Sign a PDF under Tools in the sidebar: drop files on the page or press Choose files….
• Double-click a file in Windows Explorer, use Open with, or drop a file on the Sopycat icon in the taskbar.
• Results from other tools: Put it in my library when Convert files combines files into one PDF, Add the results to my library too when it changes files to another type, and Take out as a new document in a PDF's Pages tab.

Add several files at once

Documents › Add a document

1. Click Documents in the sidebar.
2. Press Add a document. The window Add documents to your library opens.
3. Choose one or more files and confirm.

If one file can't be added, the rest still go in. Sopycat tells you how many were added and which ones it could not add.

Drag files onto the window

Drop files anywhere on the Sopycat window except the Welcome page. If you drop them while a folder is open, they go straight into that folder. A short message tells you how many were added and how many were already in your library.

To file documents after they are in, see the library help.

Work on files with one tool

Sidebar › Tools › Edit a PDF, Fill in a form, Sign a PDF, Redact a PDF or Edit a picture

Each of these tools has a page of its own, with only that tool's controls on it. It's the quickest way in when you just want to sign, redact or fill in something.

1. Click the tool in the sidebar. Its page opens; nothing asks for a file yet.
2. Drop one or several files on the page, press Choose files…, or press Choose from your library. Each file joins your library, and the original is never changed.
3. The files are listed on the left. Click one to open it on the right, make your changes, and press Save. Each save is a new version.
4. When you are done, press Save all to a folder. Every file on the list is saved to the folder you choose, named for what was done, for example Lease (signed).pdf.

The list stays while Sopycat is open, so you can go to another page and come back to it. To take a file off the list, point at it and press ×; it stays in your library.

Open files from Windows Explorer

When you double-click a file that opens in Sopycat, or choose Sopycat from Open with, the file is added to your library and opened. If it's already there, Sopycat recognizes it and opens the copy you have. To make Sopycat the app that opens PDFs or Word files, see making Sopycat your default app.

Which files can I add?

In every case the file you added is kept exactly as it was. Every save is a new version beside it.

Older Office files and the Office pack

Excel .xlsx, CSV and PowerPoint .pptx files open as they are, with nothing extra. Older formats (.doc, .rtf, .odt, .xls, .xlsb, .ods, .ppt, .odp) are brought into their modern equivalent as you add them, which needs the Office pack (about 350 MB, added from Settings). The Office pack also draws a deck's slides. Without it you'll see a message like "report.xls needs the Office pack to open here." See Setting up the Office pack.

To open the file you added in its own program, use the document's ⋯ menu › Open the original XLS in its app (or whichever type it was). To make a PDF of any document, use ⋯ › Make a PDF copy. To see a document's file in File Explorer or copy it, see Open a document in another program.

Files added with an earlier version of Sopycat were turned into PDFs. Open one and press the button in the blue bar at the top to open it as the spreadsheet, deck, Word file or picture it really is.

What if I add the same file twice?

Sopycat compares what is inside the file, not its name. If it already has the same file, it doesn't add a second copy. It says "Already in your library" with the document's title and opens the one you already have. A renamed copy of the same file is still recognized.

Can I search the words inside my documents?

Yes. Sopycat reads the text of PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, PowerPoint, Markdown, text and web page files so the library search finds them by what they say, not just by name. It reads up to 400,000 characters of each file.

A scanned PDF is only pictures of pages, so it has no words to search until you run text recognition on it:

Open the PDF › More › Make it searchable (OCR)…

Text recognition works in English only. See making a scan searchable.

Why won't my file add?

• "… is a folder. Add the files inside it instead." Open the folder and choose the files themselves.
• "Unsupported file type" Sopycat can't open that kind of file. Check the list above, or convert it first in the program that made it.
• "… needs the Office pack to open here." Add the Office pack in Settings, then add the file again.

Is there a size limit?

No. There is no file size limit. Very large pictures are scaled down as they come in.