After announcing the Outlook edition 2.5 upgrade last night, a bunch of things have come to light. Mostly the fact that we haven’t really laid out what a user needs to do to upgrade. So let me try to help things out a bit here.
Outlook edition now comes as part of our subscription plans; in particular, it’s part of the business subscription plans. “Consumer” plans do not include Outlook edition. But, as part of this release, we’re giving you a way to upgrade (or extend) your account for free.
After you install Outlook edition, it will ask for your NewsGator Online credentials, and it will attempt to activate itself online with your account. If, at this point, your account is not a business plan, the product will not activate and you’ll get a message to that effect.
So here’s what you need to do.
If you already have a NewsGator Online account:
1. Sign into NewsGator Online, go to the NewsGator Manager, click My Account.
2. Put in your old Outlook edition 2.0 license key where it’s asked for on this page. That will cause your subscription to be upgraded/extended as appropriate. If you don’t have your license key handy, you can get it here.
3. Install and activate Outlook edition 2.5.
If you don’t have a NewsGator Online account:
1. Go to https://www.newsgator.com/ngs/order1.aspx, and sign up for a new account. Make sure to enter your Outlook edition 2.0 license key in the box, if you have one (retrieve it here if you don’t have it handy).
2. After you’ve created your new business account, install and activate Outlook edition 2.5.
Sorry for all the confusion on this…
I’ve done all this and now in Outlook I get the following error message:
Account Expired
Your account expired on: 6/29/2007
Your account has expired for one of the following reasons:
No billing information on file
The credit card on file has expired
An error occurred when processing a charge for your card
Please go to NewsGator Online to renew your account
***
Either time flies or it isn’t really after 6/29/2007 !!!
I get the same error, Bob. Other users are getting it, as well.
There’s quite a furor (as there well should be!!) over this in the NewsGator Support discussion boards…
And no solution as of yet, either.
Recently, I’ve praised highly the NewsGator OE…Now, it seems I must eat my hat!!!
Guys – if you’re having any kind of problem, _please_ send a note to support at newsgator.com, including as much information as you can. Bob, in particular, the dev team wants to talk to you directly about the “expired” problem you’re seeing…or at very least, they need the username of your account. Thanks!
So how do I get the free 2 years without providing my credit card #?
I have the same error and have emailed support twice. So far no reply.
My account name is pilotbob.
I got a reply from support but I didn’t understand it. They asked me if I activated OE? Well, this should be handled via my subscription right? I appreciate the upgrade but now I have OE at home and work and neither is working!
I just hate reading blogs online.
BOb
FYI: Feel free to have your devs call me at home up to about 11PM eastern tonight at my home number. My number is in my online account profile.
Funny, I am a developer and our product manager nixed an upgrade release because it hosed another one of our products. I am glad she did, cause I’d rather explain why it’s late than why it doesn’t work. I had already spent about 6 days on install building and testing. I have since spent another two days on it, and I’m glad I did. It should be a much easier upgrade experience for our customers now.
So, I feel your pain. I’m sure you’ll make it right, but boy does it suck to be a dev/qa/support person at your company today/tonight!!!
BOb
Mark – at the moment you can’t, but I believe that was just a mistake. You should be able to get the upgrade without a CC…check back sometime tomorrow.
Ok, card no longer required. :-)
The update 2.5 (14 July) hangs up with an installation attempt. The hour glass stays even after an hour. Had no problems with 2.5 (June). If I try to run it again I get the, “Failed to extract file ‘NewBinary21’ from the binary table” Although Newsgator says this happens only up to version 2.0 this is not correct.
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