Product distributions
All of Em’s products are available only as electronic distributions, downloadable in .zip archive format from any product-related page (in the right sidebar), and from product (normal and beta) release news posts.
Product distributions include the XTensions or plug-ins, located in separate folders for each supported version of XPress and InDesign (e.g., for InDesign CS4/CS5/5.5 or QuarkXPress 8/9).
These electronic distributions are all-purpose, functioning as full copies after purchase, as trial/evaluation copies before purchase, and as upgrade copies for products bought earlier from Em (using your newly-purchased serial number for major upgrades, and using your existing serial for minor upgrades). You can also get pre-release distributions of our products during our public beta tests.
Each product also has a PDF manual, downloadable from its product page sidebar, or else an online manual, linked from its product page sidebar. Most products have tutorial files available in the same place.
License policy
Note that each licensed serial can be installed on only one machine (or up to two machines, if they can be guaranteed to never be used at the same time, e.g., a traveling laptop and stable desktop). See sales policies, section “Single-use serial policy” for more details.
Downloading
To download, find the product sidebar corresponding to your “mothership” product (InDesign or QuarkXPress) and then, within that sidebar element, your operating system (Mac OS X or Windows), and click the Download button on the appropriate product. Your browser will download the product archive to its default download folder, and (usually) auto-expand to a set of folders containing the various mothership versions.
Then download the product manual and any tutorial files corresponding to your product from the same sidebar.
Important: always download directly to the installation machine; e.g., downloading a Mac OS .zip on a Windows machine and transferring the .zip file doesn’t work, even if it’s not expanded. (Yes, that’s odd.)
Installing
For InDesign CS5 plug-ins, locate the appropriate mothership version sub-folder you just downloaded (e.g., Plug-ins for InDesign CS5), and double-click on each .zxp (Extension Manager) file in that folder to install it, in turn.
(Windows 7 CS5 users: If you’re having trouble with permissions when using the Extensions Manager installation under CS5, try right-clicking on the Windows Start/All Programs/Adobe CS5/Adobe Extension Manager CS5 menu item and selecting Run as administrator. Then follow the instructions above.)
For InDesign CS4 and earlier plug-ins, locate the appropriate mothership version sub-folder you just downloaded, and drag all the plug-in files from that sub-folder (at least the main plugin along with its matching UI plugin) into the InDesign/Plug-ins sub-folder, or any sub-folder of InDesign/Plug-ins. We recommend creating a Plug-ins/Em Software sub-sub-folder for holding our plug-ins, but that’s optional.
For QuarkXPress XTensions, drag the desired XTension file into the XTension sub-folder of the QuarkXPress folder, or into a sub-folder of the XTension sub-folder that you create (e.g., an Em Software sub-folder for our products).
installing a new product
When you start up InDesign or XPress the first time after installing your Em product, it will prompt you for a name, affiliation and serial number. You can enter anything in the name and affiliation fields, but enter your purchased serial in the serial number field. (You can copy and paste it from your purchase confirmation email to ensure accuracy.) Then press OK to serialize your product and continue.
installing a product for trial/evaluation
When you start InDesign or XPress the next time after installing your Em product, and want to use it for evaluation only, simply press Demo to skip the serialization process.
In demonstration mode, each product is fully functional, but limited in the number of items it will process. For example, you’re limited to 50 records per import in EmData, 50 updates in either direction in EmCatalog, and 50 paragraphs input or output in Xtags, etc.
installing a product for upgrade
For a minor upgrade, which is always free, you should be able to simply start InDesign or XPress after installing the new (minor) version with no further action.
For a major upgrade, you will be prompted to enter your newly-purchased upgrade serial when you next start InDesign or XPress, just as when you first purchased it.
(Note that we have a year’s upgrade protection policy, so a major upgrade will be free if you purchased the previous version anytime after a year before the release date.)
installing a product for beta testing
Beta-test versions of major upgrades usually work with the previous major version’s serial numbers, so you should be able to install the beta version, and keep working under your existing serial.
Once the beta test is finished, you’ll have to obtain a new serial number for the final major upgrade release.
Moving a product to a new machine
The only sure way to move a product to a new machine is to delete it from the old machine (remove it from the plug-in or XTensions subfolder), re-download the latest version from our web site, and install that just-downloaded version from scratch on the new machine, following the appropriate instructions above.
