Citavi reports that the project cannot be opened with your license or that the project is read-only

Problem

When trying to open a project you receive a message that the project cannot be opened with your license, or after opening a project in Citavi you receive a message that the project is read-only.

Causes and solutions

Citavi is currently not licensed

Citavi 6

There is currently no valid license in your Citavi Account. Your Trial License might have expired or your site license needs renewal. Please check the status of your licenses in your Citavi Account

Citavi 5 or earlier

You have not entered a license key in Citavi and have entered more than 100 references per project. Citavi Free has the complete functionality of Citavi for Windows, with one limitation: you cannot save if you have more than 100 references in all open projects. Please enter your license key.

You are not properly logged in

The login information stored on your computer might be invalid. Please proceed as follows:

1. Log out of https://citaviweb.citavi.com.

2. Start Citavi for Windows and log out of your Citavi account on the Welcome screen.

3. Close the application and restart it.

4. Complete the log in process.

The following causes and solutions apply to Local Projects only:

Citavi project has "read-only" file property

In Windows Explorer, right-click the Citavi project file and then click Properties. Click General and then clear the Read-only checkbox.

Citavi project is "read-only" because it was opened directly from a ZIP file

Extract the project by right-clicking the ZIP file and clicking Extract all. Open the extracted project file.