Frequently Asked Questions
Learn using Visiodocs by simply trying it out, and read about the details in the User Guide, which can be launched from the Visiodocs application. Further information we have compiled into the list below.
You don’t need to be a computer wiz to be in control of your document collection. Visiodocs is for everyone! All you need to do is:
1. Hit Login in the top menu of visiodocs.com.
2. Log in with your Google or Facebook account (or sign up with your email).
3. Add your first documents and feel the overview.
When setting up your first project you will taken on a guide tour to learn about the Visiodocs layout, and information about the primary features.
See get started video below:
You can log into Visiodocs with your existing Microsoft, Google or Facebook account (federated login). This is recommended by many as a both convenient and safe method, where you do not have to handle a separate password specifically for Visiodocs.
If your comapny have an Enterprise Agreement with Visiodocs you login using Microsoft and your company email. Then you automatically have access to Visiodocs PRO and your companys settings, logos, stamps etc.
When using a federated login, you are shortly redirected to Microsoft, Google or Facebook to get authenticated, before returning to Visiodocs. You can also choose to log in to Visiodocs using email and password. To do this, you initially need to sign up to Visiodocs, providing name, email and a unique, safe password. Regardless of which login method you use, you can choose the option ‘Keep me logged in’. When used, your browser stores the authentication information needed to log in for next time you visit Visiodocs.
Use only ‘Keep me logged in’ when you are the only user of the computer account or device.
Note that each of the login methods create a separate account in Visiodocs. To avoid confusion, Visiodocs displays in the login page the login method last used. Once logged in, you do have the option to change login method in the user account dialog.
Link to login portal: https://app.visiodocs.com/login
Visiodocs supports multiple authentication methods, making it easy to switch your login type if needed. For example, if you initially signed in using a username and password, but your organization later implements Single Sign-On (SSO), you can easily switch your login method to use your company's Microsoft account instead. Here is how:
Open the User Account dialog in Visiodocs (icon in top right corner):
Click Add authentication.
Click OK.
The normal Visiodocs login screen comes up:
Select the Authentication provider your company uses, in most cases Microsoft. In the following you are taken to the Authentication providers web site. Please follow the steps you normally use to log in.
After completing this, your User dialog in Visiodocs will look like this (in this example Google was used as Authentication provider).
Now you can log in using both username / password and using your company's authentication provider. If you are adding an authentication provider because your company implements SSO you should delete the e-mail + password as the provider.
Visiodocs is a ‘SaaS’ application (Software as a Service), that offer you the same application and the same features, whether you use it on the desktop, tablet or smart phone. There is nothing that needs installing, as you are always running the latest release from visiodocs.com in you web browser.
You start Visiodocs directly by browsing to app.visiodocs.com. In your browser you can then choose to bookmark the web address for future convenience.
In most browsers you can also create a Visiodocs shortcut directly in your device’s home screen or desktop, so that you can open Visiodocs the same way you open classic installed apps. This browser option is typically called ‘Add to Home Screen’ or ‘Create shortcut’. When opening Visiodocs from such a shortcut, the browser’s address bar will typically be hidden to provide more room for the web content.
Import documents into Visiodocs by drag and drop into the document list (left side of the user interface) . You can also open your file finder by hitting the + , located in the document list area. We importing a large number of documents we recommend to import via you your file finder (+).
You can import various file formats (see FAQ), which are convertet into PDF on the fly. Single files attached to emails can also be dragged into the document list. However, you can only import multiple files from your file finder. You cannot import an Winzip foler, files directly from a Winzip folder or an online resource.
You will find our reference guide in user options in the top right corner of the user interface and in the helpdesk section in the footer of the website. You can also access the reference guide directly from here:
Visiodocs works internally with PDF files, but you can upload a wide range of office and image formats. These will be automatically converted to PDF. Supported formats include:
Documents: .doc, .docx, .odt
Presentations: .ppt, .pptx, .odp
Spreadsheets: .xls, .xlsx, .ods
Images: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tiff
Emails: .eml, .msg
Note: For more information on adding email files (.eml and .msg), please refer to the FAQ on adding emails in the PDF Tools section.
Manual PDF Conversion:
If your file format is not supported, you can convert your file to PDF using the "Save as PDF" function in most applications. Alternatively, you can use the built-in PDF printer drivers in Windows and macOS. This method also lets you fine-tune the layout when converting spreadsheets, CAD files, or web pages to PDF.
You can share a project from you dashboard. A sharing icons will appear as you hoover over the project you would like to share. You can aslo share using the sharing icon followed by the project name in the lower left side of the status line, when working in your project.
Please note that all content and folders can be seen by all members of a project. Members can review and annotate. When members "can edit" they can add, delete and move doucments etc. Only the project owner can change the sharing settings.
Exact Matches Only:
The search engine looks for exact matches in your documents. For example:
• If you search for Johnson, it will find all occurrences of “Johnson.”
• But if a word is broken across a line, like John- son, it won’t be found.
Searching Numbers:
To find numbers like 1,234,567.89, you must search for the exact format: 1,234,567.89. Searching for 1234567,89 will not work.
Special Characters:
Some characters like /, \, and - are ignored by the search engine. So:
• Searching for www.visiodocs.com will work.
• But searching for https://www.visiodocs.com will not work.
Multiple Words:
You can search for more than one word at a time. For example:
• If you search for John Johnson, the search will show all occurrences of “John” and all occurrences of “Johnson.”
5. Date Search:
You can search for dates in two ways:
1. Type the exact date in the search field.
2. Click the “Search index for dates” icon to filter the document list. This will narrow down the results to only documents containing dates.
When entering a specific date, the document list will only display documents that include that exact date. While you don’t need to match the exact formatting of the date, you must follow the day-month-year (d-m-y) order specified in the Content Search field.
Example:
If you search for the date “24.12.24,” the search will find all occurrences of that date, regardless of format, but respecting the date order (d-m-y) such as:
• 24-12-2024
• 24 December 2024
• 24/12-2024
Note: Only dates that match the format displayed in the Content Search field will be highlighted within the documents.
Important Note About PDFs
Sometimes, PDFs—especially ones created from scanned documents—can cause issues:
• These PDFs might look perfect on the screen because you’re seeing an image.
• However, the text behind the scenes (which the search engine reads) may be messy or broken up.
• For instance, Johnson might appear as Joh nson in the hidden text, making it hard to find with a search.
If you’re not getting the results you expect, this is often why!
Important Note About Adding New Documents
When adding new documents, ensure that the "spinner" next to the Content Search field has stopped spinning before proceeding. If you add documents while the spinner is active, the newly added documents may not be included in the search index.
If this happens, you can manually update the search index using the Consolidate Content Search Index option:
1. Click the More menu (the three vertical dots to the right of the Content Search field).
2. Select Consolidate Content Search Index to update the index.
Recovering a Broken Search Index
If the search index becomes corrupted or incomplete, you can rebuild it from scratch:
1. Open the User / “Your Username” dialog.
2. Click the Rebuild Project Search Index… button.
Please note that rebuilding the search index is a time-intensive process and may take up to 1 hour to complete.
Open the search tool above the document list. In the (...) menu you can select or deselect search options. Please note that when importing documents Visiodocs will index materials. The process lasts from minutes up to an hour for very large document collections. An indicator (spinner) will be active until the process is done.
Once indexing is done you can search all dates within documents. You click the calendar icon and all dates will be found. Note that in some cases time of day could be confused with a date. E.g. 12.12.20 could could mean December 12th 2020, or 12 hours, 12 minutes and 20 seconds.
When highlighting a document the first 10 lines with dates will show. If you click a line, then the date will be highlighted in the viewer in the right side of your interface.
Once Visiodocs has found all dates within the documents you click the second date icon. When doing so the columns containg dates will update to the first found date.
Should the first found date not be correct you can easily update the date in the date column. With the search tool open you can toggle and select the correct date. Visiodocs looks for the first found date, but in certain documents the legal date may be on the last page (e.g. a contract). Time of day could also be confused with a date. E.g. 12.12.20 could could mean december 12th 2020, or 12 hours, 12 minutes and 20 seconds.
To sort documents in alphbetical order you go to the document list options menu.
You create a new project and name it "Project Template" or similar. Then you set-up you template, as follows:
1. Add and name your favorite folders
2. Add section headers
3. Rename colors and add the categories you normally use
4. Set-up a new project using your template
When hoovering over a project in the dashboard a copy project icon will appear. Make a copy and rename your new project.
Drag files into your project and begin working!
When hoovering over a project in the dashboard a copy project icon will appear. Make a copy and rename your project.
Yes, in the document download menu you can choose to save to a ZIP folder.
In the sharing menu you can update the owner of the project.
To ensure consistant performance Visiodocs has restricted the capacity to the following limits per project:
Max. number of documents: 5.000
Max. number of pages: 50.000
Max. document size: 1000 Mbytes
Max. bundles size: 1000 Mbytes
Max. number of annotations: 5.000
Visiodocs has a recommended maximum of 50,000 pages per project. Exceeding this limit can significantly impact performance. While we try to enforce this limit, it’s not always possible to do so automatically. This is because we don’t know the exact number of pages in each document until it has been uploaded and processed in the cloud.
When Can the Page Limit Be Exceeded?
You may exceed the page limit in the following scenarios:
Bulk uploads: If you add a large number of pages to a project that is already close to the limit-- for example, uploading 50,000 pages to a project that already contains 49,000 pages - you could end up with a project totaling 99,000 pages.
Delayed page count updates: After uploading documents, it can take up to an hour before the total page count is updated. During this time, you can continue to upload more documents, potentially pushing the total far beyond the limit.
What Happens If You Exceed the Limit?
Projects that exceed 50,000 pages may still function, but:
Performance will degrade noticeably.
Content search may become slow or unreliable.
How to Avoid Exceeding the Limit
When uploading a large number of documents:
1. Monitor the spinning icon next to the Content search field. This indicates that the page count is still being updated.
2. Wait until the icon stops spinning. Only then will the page count (shown below the document list) reflect the actual total.
3. Use this updated page count to ensure you stay within the 50,000-page limit.
What to Do If You Run Into Issues
If your project becomes too large and starts experiencing problems:
Reduce the number of pages by removing unnecessary or oversized documents.
Visiodocs is not an archiving system, so when you use the “Download selected documents” feature, the files you download may differ from the originals you uploaded.
PDFs will appear visually the same, but the file size may differ. This is because we process PDFs to remove encryption, convert them to PDF/A format, and optionally add annotations, comments or stamps.
Office documents (e.g., Word, Excel) will be downloaded as PDF equivalents.
Emails will also be downloaded as PDFs, based on the conversion settings chosen at the time of upload.
If you see your document titles in red, it means Visiodocs is having trouble opening the file. This can happen for one of three main reasons:
1) A temporary loading issue:
Visiodocs had a problem displaying the document.
Solution: Try to fix this error and reload the document. You can do this by using the Error info… button found in the document's context menu, that is shown when you right click the document in red.
2) A problem during upload:
The file became damaged or corrupted while you were uploading it.
Solution: You need to upload the document again.
3) The file is already damaged on your computer:
The original file on your computer is already corrupt or broken.
Solution: Get a working copy of the document and then upload that good copy to Visiodocs.
Visiodocs automatically creates a backup of all the individual projects and the user account changes once a day. You can restore any of these objects separately by going to the restore page (also available in the user account dialog). Note that you may be asked to login first. Try to enter this URL if the Visiodocs app will not load.
Supported Devices and Browsers
Visiodocs is a cloud-based software, meaning that you access Visiodocs using a browser that supports modern standards.
Supported Operating Systems:
Windows (latest versions)
macOS (latest versions)
Supported Web Browsers:
Google Chrome (latest version)
Microsoft Edge (Chromium edition, latest version). Note that the old non-chromium Edge is not supported.
How to check if you use the chromium based Edge
Open Microsoft Edge.
In the address bar, type edge://settings/help and press Enter.
Look for the following:
If it says “Microsoft Edge is up to date” and shows a version number starting with 79 or higher, you are using the Chromium-based Edge.
If you see a version lower than 44 or the page looks different and lacks Chromium-specific wording, you’re likely using the legacy Edge.
If you are using a non-Apple mouse like a Logitech mouse, unnecessary scrollbars might be shown in places like dialogs. You can remove the scrollbars by going into System Preferences / General and setting “Show scroll bars” to “When scrolling”.
Visiodocs PRO is invoiced as a yearly subscription per user.
Please contact sales@visiodocs.com, if you would like a quote for a Visiodocs PRO licence or an Enterprise agreement.