Is life becoming too confusing?

[IanB]

A New Year a new start - sorry I mean stop. This is a general grumble and I don't expect anyone to sort out the problem for me - I've already contacted Xara support.

I have used Xara Products since Computer Concepts Wordwise and Artworks and have found them user friendly and reliable BUT in recent years things are getting more than a little confusing. I attempted to change the email address with which I registered my product as it was going to cease operation and the result was that I can now only use Designer Pro+ in Demo mode and I haven't a clue which email addresses and passwords refer to what and which ones I've changed. I have records of previously used passwords for Xara Control Centre, Xara Designer and Xara Online as well as this forum and haven't a clue which to use anymore.

Computer programs were supposed to help us not drive us mad. Am I the only one who wishes we could take a few steps backward?

Ian B

[gwpriester]

Here's a link to Xara's support site https://support.xara.com/ I agree. Things are spinning way too fast.

[IanB]

I really need to thank Matt and the engineering guys at Xara for sorting things out for me.

I was locked out of Designer Pro+ for nearly 24 hours. It was asking me to activate the program but wouldn't accept the email address I registered it with. The email address is connected to a domain that is currently being transferred from one company who are useless with customers to another who, so far, have been excellent. A 3-5 day delay was mentioned.

This caused a lot of problems and, while it was reassuring to know that Xara do not have easy access to my account details, I was relieved when the technical guys managed to allow me to activate the program with another email.

So thanks to Xara and a warning to others not to be so foolish as me.

[handrawn]

it's a disadvantage of the activation system being tied to an account accessed by email and password, rather than an activation code, but the advantage is you can log on from any device you have access to

microsoft office have been using this system for a long time, as have many other software providers

it is no different in principle to accessing any other online account, be it a bank or amazon or whatever

[Jon123Jon]

Ditto IanB's comment above. Used an OLD version of Xara Designer for years, recently though I'd catch up to date, and... ouch! Desktop versions! Web versions! Subscriptions! Magix! Xara in England! Xara GMBH in Germany! OMG, this is worse than surfing one of those winter waves off Ventura, what a jumble of product possibilities.
So I posted here about it, and also got immediate help from Matt at Xara English. Made everything clear as a bell, cleared up my auto-subsription confusion. EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE! As a long-time customer who can dimly remember CorelXara, I can hope that the current crew at Xara can rationalize their product offerings, make a simpler, better website, and amplify their efforts to sell their fine product!