Activating Your Birder's Diary Licenses

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Birder's Diary Licenses

When you purchase Birder's Diary, either from the Online Store or from a distributor, you are presented with a copy of your invoice at the end of your purchase and, a copy is e-Mailed to the e-Mail address that you specified.

On this Invoice you will find three pieces of information, for each taxonomic list purchased, that are important. If you purchased a user license for a particular version of Birder's Diary, you will not receive an installation password. The Birder's Diary program does not require an installation password, only the taxonomic installation files require this password.

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The License ID for the option you purchased. This is shown in yellow on the image above.
The License Password for the option you purchased. This is shown in red on the image above. IMPORTANT: This password is the same for all your licensed options and the same as your Online Store account password. Never give this password out.
The Installation Password for the download file. This is show in green on the image above. This password will only be provided for purchased taxonomic lists - not for user licenses. This password will be asked for when performing an installation on a purchased taxonomic list.

Activating Your Licenses

Now that you have the information for all the purchased product options, you can activate each option by entering its License ID and Password into Birder's Diary using the following instructions.

IMPORTANT: For this process to work, you must be

Connected to the Internet (if you do not have an internet connection - please see instructions at the bottom of this topic for offline activation), and
Allow communication from Birder's Diary to the Internet License Server. Many firewall/antivirus software applications (e.g. Norton Antivirus, McAfee, ZoneAlarm, etc.) may prohibit or warn when Birder's Diary attempts to communicate with the license server over the internet. If you get a warning from such software, make sure you allow this communication. If you do not get a warning and the activation attempt fails, be sure to temporarily disable ALL such software during this process. Re-enable it again after you have completed activation. This usually isn't required and the activation completes without intervention on your part.

Start Birder's Diary.
Important: If running Birder's Diary on Windows VISTA or Windows 7, start Birder's Diary for this activation process by right-clicking on the Birder's Diary desktop icon and choosing Run as administrator. If Birder's Diary is already running, exit first and restart using this procedure. You only need to do this for license activation when on Windows VISTA or Windows 7.
If the License Information window doesn't come up automatically (it would do this if your copy has not been previously licensed), bring it up by selecting Help | LICENSING: Information and Activation from the main menu.
On the License Information window, you will find details about your current license status (Demo or Licensed) and, if licensed - your currently active licenses. It will not show products for which you have not activated your licenses yet.
Now you are ready to activate all of your licenses. You can activate your licenses in random order.

Click on the Unlock Now button, you will be presented with a window that requires you to make a choice. Choose the correct option and click on the button at the bottom.
NOTE: If you have already answered the question on this window previously in the same Birder's Diary session, you will not be presented with it again when you click on Unlock Now.

If you chose option #2, you will be prompted to restart Birder's Diary using 'run as admin' as demonstrated and repeat the steps to get here.
After Clicking on the Activate License button, you will be presented with the "Unlock via Internet" window.
If you connect to the internet through a proxy (not the usual home-based situation), be sure to click on the Proxy button and enter your proxy information.
Enter one of your License IDs into the License ID field, and
Enter your License Password into the Password field. Both of these values come from your Purchase Invoice as described above
Click on Ok.
If successful, you will get a popup message box indicating that your license has been activated.
If unsuccessful, you will get an error message. Be sure to write down the entire content of this message.
Turn off all antivirus/firewall software and retry the activation. If it still fails, post to the Technical Support Forum at www.BirdersDiary.com. (You must be logged onto the web site to post to the forum.)

Repeat steps 4-a through 4-f for each purchased product option.

Activating Licenses Offline

If you do not have an internet connection for the computer that you need to activate a Birder's Diary license on, or if you are attempting to activate older v3.5 upgrade licenses, you will need to follow this procedure.

Start Birder's Diary.
Important: If running Birder's Diary on Windows VISTA or Windows 7, start Birder's Diary for this activation process by right-clicking on the Birder's Diary desktop icon and choosing Run as administrator. If Birder's Diary is already running, exit first and restart using this procedure. You only need to do this for license activation when on Windows VISTA or Windows 7.
If the License Information window doesn't come up automatically (it would do this if your copy has not been previously licensed), bring it up by selecting Help | LICENSING: Information and Activation from the main menu.
On the License Information window, you will find details about your current license status (Demo or Licensed) and, if licensed - your currently active licenses. It will not show products for which you have not activated your licenses yet.
Now you are ready to activate one license at a time. You can activate your licenses in random order.

Click on the Unlock by e-Mail button, you will be presented with a window that requires you to make a choice. Choose the correct option and click on the button at the bottom.
NOTE: If you have already answered the question on this window previously in the same Birder's Diary session, you will not be presented with it again when you click on Unlock Now.

If you chose option #2, you will be prompted to restart Birder's Diary using 'run as admin' as demonstrated and repeat the steps to get here.

After Clicking on the Activate License button, you will be presented with the "Unlock via Internet" window.
Send e-Mail to support@birdersdiary.com. Indicate that you are requesting a License activation in the Subject of your e-Mail. Include the information below in 5.a and 5.b in the body of your message.
1. The License ID of the license you are attempting to activate.
2. Both User Codes on the registration window
Support will respond with the two (in some cases only one is required) Reg Key codes that you will enter. Enter the reg key codes into the respective fields on the registration window and click the Ok button. You should receive a success message indicating that you have successfully activated the requested license. If the message you receive is not success, please report the complete error text to support.
Repeat steps 4-7 for any additional licenses to be activated.
NOTE: You must do each license sequentially, and await the response. As the User Codes change each time you use this window, you cannot send multiple requests until you receive the reg key codes from the previous request.