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Bulk Actions and Multi-Select in Rayyan

Bashar
  • Updated

Multi-Select lets you select multiple references at once and apply an action to all of them in a single step. It is available across the Screening and Full-Text Screening stages and works with decisions, labels, exclusion reasons, and PDF uploads.

How to select references

There are two ways to select references:

  • One by one — use the checkbox next to each reference title to select individual items.
  • Select All — use the checkbox next to the Filter by Inclusion facet at the top of the list to select all references currently visible in your filtered view at once.
Note Select All is available on Essential, Advanced, and all Institutional plans. On the Free plan, references can only be selected one by one, with a maximum of 10 references selected at a time. See plans →

Apply bulk screening decisions

In the Screening or Full-Text Screening stage, select the references you want to act on, then use the bottom toolbar to apply a decision to all of them at once:

  • Click Include to include all selected references.
  • Click Exclude to exclude all selected references — you can assign an exclusion reason at the same time.
  • Click Maybe to mark all selected references as Maybe.
Best practice Use the Filters panel to narrow your reference list before applying bulk decisions. For example, filter by a specific keyword index to select only references containing that term, then apply a decision to the whole group in one step.

Apply bulk labels and exclusion reasons

Once you have selected your references, use the bottom toolbar to apply labels or exclusion reasons to all of them at once:

  • Click Label to assign one or more labels to all selected references.
  • Click Reason to assign an exclusion reason to all selected references.
Note Bulk label and reason assignment is particularly useful for thematic analysis workflows — for example, filtering by a keyword index and assigning a theme label to all matching references at once. See Using Rayyan for Thematic Analysis.

Upload PDFs in bulk

In the Full-Text Screening stage, you can use Multi-Select to attach PDFs to multiple references at once:

  • Use the checkboxes to select the references you want to upload PDFs for.
  • Click Attach PDF in the toolbar.
  • Select multiple PDF files from your device or library.
  • Match each PDF to the correct reference and confirm the upload.
Important Always review the PDF-to-reference matches before confirming the upload. There is no automatic way to undo a mismatch after it has been confirmed.
Best practice Gather all full-text PDFs into a single folder and name them consistently before starting a bulk upload — for example, using the first author's name and year (e.g., Smith2023.pdf). This makes matching faster and reduces errors.

Remove articles in bulk

In the Full-Text Screening stage, you can also use Multi-Select to remove multiple articles at once:

  • Select the checkboxes next to the articles you want to remove.
  • Click Remove Articles from the toolbar.

To remove all articles from the Full-Text Screening stage in one go, use Select All and then click Remove Articles.

Continue to: How to Use Keyboard Shortcuts in Rayyan

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