Thanks for all the responses!

I will give the REFI-QDA exchange format a go and report back.

Cheers,

Collin

On Mon, Mar 24, 2025 at 4:52 PM Cass Wilkinson Saldaña <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> 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
> >
>