We offer free basic technical support for our products, including
- simple pre-purchase product selection questions
- installation problems
- post-purchase general help and orientation
- product crashes, freezes, error messages
- possible product bugs; etc.
We can only effectively offer help at this basic level, though; if you need someone to write your EmData prototype, or develop an overall strategy for deploying EmCatalog, etc., we can recommend other developers (starting with Avatar DPS, our “sister” company). That said, our main goal is to get you up and running, and we have a great record with tens of thousands of successful installations world-wide since 1990.
We have various ways you can keep in touch with us, tracking product releases and general news.
We can provide a free pre-purchase project evaluation when you’re looking for a publishing automation solution. Our sister company Avatar DPS offers training for all our products. Finally, in rare cases we do custom development where your special need matches our general product direction.
Support (quick version)
- See product installation help for issues with downloading and installing.
- Make sure you’re running the latest version of the product.
- Check the “Troubleshooting” chapter/section of the product manual.
- Check the FAQs (frequently-asked questions) for the product in question (if any).
- If you’re still having trouble, narrow down the problem as far as possible, then bundle up the document & related files into a .zip archive and email it to support@emsoftware.com with a summary of the problem or question in the body of the email, detailing all relevant product and operating system versions.
- You can call us (contact information at the bottom), but if we can’t resolve your question quickly, we’re going to ask for an email with the information above.
Support (full version)
If you’ve already successfully downloaded and installed your Em product (see our product installation help otherwise), and are having trouble, first check your product page to make sure you’re running the very latest version of our software and, if not, download and install it—doing so clears up a lot of problems.
Check in the “Troubleshooting” section or chapter of your product documentation. You will often find the answers to common problems there.
Peruse the frequently-asked questions (FAQs) for your product (if there are any), which are linked from each product’s main page.
Once you’re fairly sure your question isn’t already answered, please try to reduce the size of the data and documents involved to a minimum, narrowing the problem down to just the failing elements, if you can.
Make a .zip archive containing
- your document or template document
- input data files (EmData) or tagged text files (Xtags)
- any configuration files like DD sets (for EmCatalog) or translation tables (for Xtags)
- graphic files, if relevant
- fonts, if required to show the problem
- anything else that’s relevant, such as scripts (AppleScripts, ExtendScripts) you’re using, etc.
(It’s important to send a .zip archive, even for a single file, because then the contents are protected from the indignities of email processing.)
Send an email to support@emsoftware.com, attaching the archive file you created, with the body of the message containing:
- a detailed outline of the problem or question, along with the steps required to reproduce the problem
- your operating system type and version (e.g., Mac OS X 10.5 or Windows 7)
- your “mothership” product and version (e.g., InDesign CS5 or QuarkXPress 7.5)
- your Em product, version (e.g., InData 7.1.5 or Xtags 4.3.2) and Em serial number (or else let us know you’re doing a product evaluation).
If the .zip archive would be too large to email (over 5 MB or so), you can upload it to one of the free file sharing services and send the resulting link in your email to support@emsoftware.com (in place of the archive file); we’ve had good success with http://get.tt.
We pride ourselves on our small-company personal touch (see “People” sidebar), so you’re welcome to call us (see our contact information at the bottom of every page on this site), but if the problem isn’t quickly answered over the phone, we’re going to request that you follow the email directions above.
Interactive support
In rare cases, if we can’t reproduce your problem, we can schedule an online screen-sharing join.me session to see the problem on your machine. You start a sharing session, and send us email containing the invitation link, and we’ll go from there. (This method requires a decent “uplink” speed on your Internet connection.)
