Hi Collin,

I poked around some GitHub repos and Reddit threads and saw anecdotal
confirmation that yes, NVivo 14 has a new encryption scheme that is
incompatible with older tools like nvivotools. However, it looks like NVivo
14 supports exporting with the open REFI-QDA standard (new to me!) Would
this be an option for the team:
https://help-nv.qsrinternational.com/14/mac/Content/projects-teamwork/refi-qda%20standard.htm#Export

It looks like not every aspect of NVivo 14 projects are supported, as per
their limitations section (grr). But if those aren't dealbreakers, it looks
like youh ave a few more options:
https://www.qdasoftware.org/refi-qda-codebook

A bunch of the software related to REFI-QDA are also proprietary, but
QualCoder looks to be FOSS!  https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder

So, tl;dr: perhaps look into exporting as REFI-QDA and importing into
QualCoder, either as an open source alternative to NVivo or a place to do
further data transformation/open exporting?

Hope there's something useful in all that! Take care,
Cass



On Mon, Mar 24, 2025 at 3:04 PM Paul R. Pival <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi, Collin, thanks for the pointer to that Github project. I think it's
> not going to help w/o some major work, though I may be wrong.
>
> I spent the last hour feeding error messages to Claude to tweak *one* of
> the python scripts on my mac to see what it would do with a v14 .nvpx file,
> and after learning about virtual environments and loading a fair number of
> dependencies, eventually ended up with:
>
> python3 NVPX2RQDA3.py Wednesday.nvpx
> Found SQLAnywhere installation at
> /Applications/NVivo.app/Contents/SQLAnywhere/bin64
> /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/install_name_tool: warning:
> changes being made to the file will invalidate the code signature in:
> /Applications/NVivo.app/Contents/SQLAnywhere/lib64/libdbcapi_r.rpath.dylib
> Warning: Could not parse environment line: 'nvivoversion='
> Missing database encryption key for database
> '/var/folders/qr/b54flwhx36n2tvql38myd9gc0000gn/T/tmpu1hjpv0c'.
>
> With Claude suggesting,
> The script is now trying to work with your NVivo file, but it's
> encountering an encryption issue. NVivo files (especially from newer
> versions like your NVivo 14) are encrypted, and the script needs the
> encryption key to access the data.
> The error message Missing database encryption key for database suggests
> that the conversion tool doesn't have the necessary decryption capabilities
> for your NVivo file.
> This is a common issue with newer NVivo versions. The tool you're using
> (nvivotools) was likely developed for older NVivo versions (10 and 11 as
> mentioned in the script), and NVivo has changed its encryption methods in
> newer versions.
>
> So maybe something can be done to update the encryption algorithms, but
> I'm guessing not :-(
>
> --
>
> Paul R. Pival
> Director of Emerging Technologies, LCR
> University of Calgary
> TFDL 466C
> [log in to unmask]
> Pronouns: he, him, his
>