This product resends one Manifold serial number email to the original email address used for a 6.50 order, or in the case of previous editions to the email address of record as of 25 July 2005. If the email address is no longer valid, the key recovery will fail and the $35 fee will not be refunded - it will be retained as a service fee for the labor involved in the recovery attempt.

Order this product when you know for sure the exact email address that was used to order Manifold System or which was designated as the email address of record before 25 July 2005.  For orders before 25 July 2005, the email address of record is the email address used to place the order as updated by an acknowledged address change. 

Instructions for Limited Key Recovery 

1. Visit the Manifold Online Store and add a Limited Key Recovery product to the cart.
2. Proceed to check out.
3. In the Check Out page, make sure to use the exact email address that was used for the original serial number email to be recovered.
4. No physical product will be shipped, so use the same "shipping address" as is used for the billing address for the credit card.
5. Choose a "License Only" shipping method to avoid unnecessary shipping charges.
6. Check your order carefully before submitting to avoid typographic errors and then place the order.

Note: Do not choose a shipping method other than License Only. If you choose a shipping method other than License Only, your card will be billed that shipping fee even though no shipping is required.  

When the order is processed (two to three business days), a serial number email for the most recent Manifold System product ordered using the email address provided will be reconstructed and re-sent to that email address.  If there is no exact match to the email address used for any previous Manifold System order, then processing ends and the $35 fee will be used up to no good purpose.  If that happens you will receive an email sent to the given email address informing you that the recovery attempt has failed.

Limited Key Recovery attempts that fail usually do so because the email address given is not the exact email address that was used for that order.  The problem is usually that the customer does not remember the correct email address and tries the wrong email address.  In that case, the customer could always try again with a different email address (for an additional $35 fee).  However, in cases where the email address cannot be remembered with certainty it may be less costly to simply use the Extended Key Recovery service for a single $75 fee instead of taking the chance of using multiple $35 fees.

This product orders an attempt to resend one Manifold serial number email to a designated current email address, based upon the original customer information used for orders of Manifold products before 25 July 2005. If the recovery attempt fails the $75 fee will not be refunded - it will be retained as a service fee for the labor involved in the recovery attempt. Please read this page carefully before ordering this product to avoid wasting the service fee.

Instructions for Extended Key Recovery 

1. Visit the Manifold Online Store and add an Extended Key Recovery product to the cart.
2. Proceed to check out.
3. In the Check Out page, make sure to use your current email address so Sales can contact you.
4. No physical product will be shipped, so use the same "shipping address" as is used for the billing address for the credit card.
5. Choose a "License Only" shipping method to avoid unnecessary shipping charges.
6. Check your order carefully before submitting to avoid typographic errors and then place the order.

Note: Do not choose a shipping method other than License Only. If you choose a shipping method other than License Only, your card will be billed that shipping fee even though no shipping is required.  

When the order is processed (two to three business days), Sales will contact you by email to send you a form letter with information you must supply. If you can supply accurate information, it will be possible to unambiguously identify the order associated with the serial number you wish to recover, to identify you as the licensee and to increase the chances of a successful recovery for you.  Inaccurate information will cause a recovery attempt to fail. If you do not have some of the information requested, do not guess.  It is better not to have some points of information than to provide inaccurate information.

Information for the original order that will be requested for Extended Key Recovery:

• Date of original order
• Manifold System product
• User name
• Email address
• Shipping address
• Telephone number
• Credit card type (if a credit card was used)
• Last four digits of credit card
• Expiration date of credit card
• Name on credit card
• Purchase Order number (if a purchase order was used)
• Billing address
• Masked serial number (from Help - About, if available)

You must reply to Sales within 3 business days with the information requested for the extended key recovery service to be successful.  If the recovery attempt is successful, a serial number email for the recovered order will be reconstructed and re-sent to your current email address.  If the recovery attempt is not successful the $75 fee will be used up to no good purpose.  If that happens you will receive an email sent to your current email address informing you that the recovery attempt has failed.

If successful, both key recovery services will find and recover all serial numbers associated with the most recent order that matches the information given in the key recovery service.

• The Limited Key Recovery service recovers the most recent order for the given email address for any Manifold products with a serial number and reports all serial numbers for that order.
• The Extended Key Recovery service allows you to specify the Manifold product sought as part of the information provided and will recover the most recent order (normally the order on the date given, if a date can be given) for that specific Manifold product.  If you do not specify a Manifold product, the recovery will try to find the most recent order for any Manifold products with a serial number and reports all serial numbers for that order.

The above considerations should be kept in mind when planning a key recovery strategy to make best use of service fees.  For example, suppose someone has placed three separate orders for Manifold products: one for Manifold 6.00 Professional Edition, a subsequent order for Business Tools and then a final order for Surface Tools.  Suppose the customer still has the Business Tools and Surface Tools serial numbers but the original Professional Edition serial number has been lost.  

In that case, the customer should use the Extended Key Recovery service to obtain the Professional Edition serial number.  Using the Limited Key Recovery service would be a mistake, because that service will report only the last order's serial number, which in this case would be a serial number for Surface Tools and would not be the serial number sought for Professional Edition.

In contrast, suppose a customer has placed only one order, to acquire both Manifold Professional Edition and the Option Pack in a single order.  In that case, using the Limited Key Recovery service (if the exact email address is still being used) is a good choice because it will recover and resend all of the serial numbers for that order.

If you have ever upgraded Manifold System, only the most recent upgrade serial number is active.  The previous serial number, from which you upgraded, is revoked and can no longer be used to fetch Activation keys.   Upgrades replace an existing Manifold license - they do not add a new license.  For example, if you originally licensed Manifold System 6.00 and then you used your 6.00 serial number to acquire an Upgrade to 6.50, the 6.00 serial number has been replaced with the new 6.50 serial number.  The old 6.00 serial number has been revoked and can no longer get Activation keys.  If you make the mistake of using the Extended Key Recovery service to recover the old 6.00 serial number, you might certainly be able to get that old  6.00 serial number but it will be useless.

A serial number can be invalid for fetching Activation keys if it has been revoked (because it was used to authorize an upgrade, or for nonpayment or other reasons) or if it has been used up by fetching all five Activation keys that it authorizes.  Do not make the mistake of using key recovery services to recover a serial number that has been revoked or has been used up.

For example, suppose John orders Manifold by PO for his university but then the PO is not paid and so manifold.net revokes the serial number.  Later on, Jane also orders Manifold using a credit card and happily goes on to use Manifold.  A year later, both John and Jane are no longer with the university and on one can find the machines on which they used Manifold.   Jake, the new IT manager, has a Manifold CD but he can't find any serial numbers to install  Manifold.  He orders a Limited Key Recovery using John's email address (being the IT manager he can make use of the old email address).  That's a mistake, because the service will find and return a serial number that was revoked for non-payment and which is now useless.

The right strategy would be to recover the serial number for Jane's order by using either Jane's email address with the Limited Key Recovery service or by using the Extended Key Recovery service based upon date of the order and other information.

A legacy email address is the address of record for pre-6.50 (that is, before 25 July 2005) Manifold System orders.

An address change will have been valid only if it was correctly sent in and acknowledged by Manifold Sales via return email.  If you don't have an email from Manifold Sales acknowledging a change of address notification, then the email address was not changed and you should use the original email address used to place an order.

Before 25 July 2005, users at times might write to Manifold Sales informing manifold.net that they acquired a license from a third party and instructing manifold.net to change the name and email address for that license to them.  That did no good, as only the original licensee could instruct manifold.net to change a license record.  Users at times would also take it for granted if a third party, such as a reseller, would tell them that a change of address had been sent in to manifold.net.  Unfortunately, it is often the case that someone would tell a customer they sent in a change of address and then failed to do so.  If you acquired Manifold through a reseller before 25 July 2005 and that reseller neglected to inform manifold.net of a change of address for the license to you, that is unfortunate, but that is a dispute between you and the reseller to which manifold.net is not a party.  Note that manifold.net does not nor has ever "authorized" or otherwise partnered with any reseller.  Anyone reselling Manifold is simply buying the product as anyone can and then reselling it without any special permission, participation, acknowledgement or authorization from manifold.net.

It is the customer's responsibility when originally ordering Manifold to provide an email address to which a serial number may be emailed and which is able to receive email messages sent by Manifold key servers.  Over time, emails which might have originally been able to receive email from Manifold key servers might no longer have the ability to do so, perhaps as a result of the email address being designated as inactive or over quota by the ISP or possibly as a result of the use of new anti-spam technology not previously used.

Given the curse of spam under which we all suffer, it is often the case that customers will provide email addresses that are not able to receive email sent by Manifold key servers due to customer or ISP use of anti-spam technology.  Keep in mind that no anti-spam technology is perfect: any anti-spam technology risks filtering out desired email.

A classic example is the "confirmation" anti-spam technology used by ISPs such as EarthLink.  This technology "challenges" any email sent to the customer.  For example, if a Manifold key server sends a serial number email to a customer using this type of technology, the anti-spam software will intercept the email and will send a message back to the server's originating email address saying something like "To prove you are not a spammer, please click on the link below and follow the instructions to confirm you are a real person."  However, a Manifold key server is not a person, it is a machine, and it cannot click on such links and follow their instructions to confirm the message is not spam.

If you or your ISP use such anti-spam technology, you will not be able to receive emails sent to you by Manifold key servers and thus you will not receive your serial number email.  It may be the case that a customer has ordered Manifold years ago and has since lost their serial number.  Now, in modern times when spam is much worse than it was years ago, that customer may have begun using anti-spam technology that was not previously used.  In such cases, even though the original serial number email was received years ago it might well be that the customer's new anti-spam technology will now block email messages sent by Manifold key servers.  If so, that will prevent the customer from successfully using a key recovery service.

TURN OFF ALL ANTI-SPAM MEASURES IF YOU USE THE KEY RECOVERY SERVICE

By ordering a key recovery service product, you agree that you are paying for one attempt to resend the serial number email to you.  If anti-spam measures or any other measures taken by you or your ISP or if any other failure of Internet prevents the serial number email sent by Manifold key servers from reaching you, you agree that any such failure is at your expense.  If the serial number must be recovered and resent a second time because the first re-sending was not received by you, you agree to pay a second recovery fee.

Note that anti-spam measures are not the only problems that affect email reception: other problems include mailboxes being over quota (with inbound messages rejected by the ISP), forwarding to new addresses that doesn't work, temporary "out of office" messages and relaying that's been set and forgotten to be unset, accidental deletions of legitimate email while clearing out spam from one's inbox and so forth.  Please do not order key recovery services except for an email account you use regularly that you know is in good order.  When you do order key recovery services, please take special care during the next three business days when deleting lots of emails from your inbox to avoid accidentally deleting any emails sent to you by the key recovery service.

Note:  Users will at times assume that if they can receive ordinary mail from sales@manifold.net in reply to their messages then there cannot be any problems with their email reception.  Unfortunately, that is not at all true.  Many anti-spam technologies are context sensitive and may pass email from one address or domain and not from others, such as the different addresses used by Manifold key servers.  In particular, some anti-spam technologies are smart enough to recognize that an incoming message is a reply to a message sent out by the user, so they will pass such messages while rejecting other messages from the very same domain or email address.

At times manifold.net is contacted by parties who have paid for a particular transaction via credit card and who are not the licensee and not the recipient of the product but who nonetheless demand access to a particular serial number.  Even if you have paid for the acquisition of a Manifold license by a third party you have no rights whatsoever to the license except in the following situations:

• The transaction is a 6.50 license and you have the 6.50 serial number.
• If you can receive email from the exact email address used to order and thus can utilize the Limited Key Recovery service.
• If the transaction occurred before 25 July 2005 (pre-6.50 license), and you have the information required for a successful key recovery using the Extended Key Recovery service.

The same security measures taken to prevent theft of your credit card number will prevent recovery of personal information, such as a serial number, if the only point of information is the credit card number that was used for the transaction.  Therefore, even if you authorized your credit card to be used in a particular transaction that does not guarantee that a lost serial number for that transaction can be recovered using your credit card number alone.  You will still need to follow the key recovery procedures given above and to provide the information required by the service selected.

I lost my 6.50 serial number and I no longer have access to the original email address.  Can I use the Extended Key Recovery service to get it back?    No.  The only way to recover a 6.50 serial number is to send it to the exact email address specified in the original order.

I'm having trouble receiving email from the key servers.  Can Manifold Sales get my serial number for me and send it to me?  No. The key servers send the email directly to the email address used for the order.  Manifold Sales does not have access to that email.  This is deliberate, to make sure that only the recipient of the email can read the serial number.

I don't remember, or, I don't have any information about when our Manifold license was obtained, who ordered it, what email address was used or any of that stuff.  How can I get a serial number?  By buying a fresh license at the regular price. If you do not have the information required to use the Extended Key Recovery service, the detective work required to help you find all that missing information would end up being so expensive that it would be much cheaper to simply buy a new license.   That's why there is no "super extended" key recovery service beyond the Extended Key Recovery service - any such service would end up costing more than simply buying a fresh license.

My partner and I have split and I no longer have the serial number or required information.  Can you send me the serial number? No.  Any business disputes between you and your former partner are not a dispute into which we can intervene. (This is similar to the preceding question.)

Our former employee left the company and neglected to tell anyone the serial numbers and other information.  What can we do?  If you have the information required by one of the two Key Recovery services you can use the appropriate service.  If you do not have that necessary information you must acquire new licenses.  (This is similar to the two preceding questions.)

If I lose the serial number a second time, do I have to buy another Key Recovery product to get it again?  Do I get a discount? Yes, you must buy the product again and no, you do not get a discount a second time around.  It takes just as much effort the second time around as it does the first time.

Is there any guarantee I can get in advance that the service will work, before I order the service?  No. It takes as much effort to see if the service will succeed as it does to actually do it.   Manifold.net could have simply charged everyone more for the key recovery services to cover the cost of failed attempts and then guarantee a successful result or your money back.  However, that would not have been fair because it would charge everyone more to cover the higher costs imposed by people who provide inaccurate information or who have self-imposed problems with email reception.  If you can use the Limited Key Recovery service your chances of key recovery are about 99%.  If you can provide accurate information for the Extended Key Recovery service your chances of key recovery are about 99%.  Problems arise when a) inaccurate information is provided or b) people have problems with email reception because of spam filters or other problems.

I accidentally made a typographic error when entering information (email address, etc.) for a Key Recovery.  Can I cancel the service?  Yes, if you can reach Manifold Sales before the order begins processing.  Once the order begins processing it cannot be cancelled and your service fee will be wasted.  During Pacific time zone business hours orders begin processing very rapidly after they are placed, since usually people are in a hurry to get a key recovered and want to see fast service.  Call by telephone to make sure your attempted cancellation is not subject to any delays that may be involved if email is sent.  The best bet, of course, is to check your order carefully before submitting to avoid typographic errors.

Why is this process so annoying and difficult?   A lock is no good if anyone can break it easily or cobble up a key for it at will.  If you have a strong lock and lose the key for it then you will encounter annoying effort to deal with the loss of the key.  If you don't have any helpful information to get the key then the effort will be greater and the annoyance more.  It's just like losing the key to your car: if you have saved the key code the dealer gave you when you bought the car you can get a replacement key at low cost.  If you don't have the key code, don't remember when or where the car was purchased or even where you left it last parked, well, in that case you understandably will have higher costs involved in replacing the key.

The key recovery services have been designed to charge the lowest possible fee by making use of automation wherever possible.  The price paid for lowered costs in most cases is that costs will be higher in those cases where users have not only lost their keys but they also do not have the information necessary to achieve key recovery at lowest possible cost.