Or am I doing it wrong? To get a normal map working on my mesh in Maya I just use Zmapper, then bring the export the map and assign it to a material in maya. I was trying to get it to work in max and eventually looked at some tutorials and it seemed so much more complicated…
you’re doing it wrong. 
create the map in Zmapper
apply a new material to the object in max
in the bump slot, make that a “normal bump”
then apply the normal to that slot
make sure the bump level at the base material is set to 100 (default of 30)
done.
It places the map on, but it doesn’t fit right. To correct this in Maya I would just go to Repeat UV and change it to -1. Is there a similar fix in Max?
Also, I can only view in when I render. Is there a way to just turn it on like when I just press 6 (high quality rendering) in maya?
yes, you can flip the map in the editor…V and W 180 i think.
and you need to set up DX shaders inside max to view them in the viewport