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 Library page. You can pick several files at once.
• Drag files from Windows Explorer onto the Sopycat window.
• Edit a PDF… under Tools in the sidebar, or in the command palette (Ctrl+K).
• 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 in Make a PDF, Add the results to my library too in Convert files, and Take out as a new document in a PDF's Pages tab.

Add several files at once

Library › Add a document

1. Open the Library.
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.

Open a PDF straight in the editor

Sidebar › Tools › Edit a PDF…

Pick a file and it joins your library and opens on the Mark up tab, ready to work on. It's the quickest way in when you just want to sign or comment on something.

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 recognises 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?

You add	What happens
PDF (.pdf)	Opens in the PDF editor, with all its tabs.
Word (.docx)	Opens in the Word editor.
Text and Markdown (.txt, .md)	Open in the text editor.
Web pages (.html, .htm)	Shown as the page. Edit the text opens it in the Word editor.
Pictures (.png, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .webp)	Shown as a picture. There is no picture editor.
Other pictures (.heic, .heif, .tif, .tiff, .bmp, .avif)	Turned into a PDF on the way in, so you can edit it. The original is kept.
Office files (.xlsx, .xls, .pptx, .ppt, .doc, .odt, .ods, .odp, .rtf, .csv)	Turned into a PDF by the Office pack. The original is kept. Needs the Office pack.

Excel, PowerPoint and older Word files

Spreadsheets, presentations, .doc, .rtf and OpenDocument files are converted to a PDF when you add them, so they open in the PDF editor, not the Word editor. The file you added is kept, and the ⋯ menu on the document offers Open the original XLSX in its app (or whichever type it was).

This conversion needs the Office pack (about 350 MB, added from Settings). Without it you'll see a message like "report.xlsx needs LibreOffice to convert. Add the Office pack in Settings." See Setting up the Office pack.

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 recognised.

Can I search the words inside my documents?

Yes. Sopycat reads the text of PDF, Word, 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 LibreOffice to convert." 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.