ChemDraw Installation Instructions

Our College-wide site license for ChemDraw permits any active member of the Macalester community to download and install ChemBioDraw Ultra on any computer. With only your @macalester.edu e-mail address, you can install it anywhere (on or off-campus, including on your own desktop/laptop). Note: you must have administrator privileges to install it, so you will not be able to install it in any Macalester computer labs (although it is already on all the computers in the Chemistry computer lab, and is being added to the base ITS science image).

Note: The instructions below are for those installing a site-licensed ChemDraw for the first time. If you have followed these steps before, please see the departmental FAQ for help.

Follow these steps for installation:

1) Go to the Cambridgesoft website.

2) Enter your @macalester.edu email address

3) Click "continue," and then "continue" again. You will need to create an account with Cambridgesoft.

4) You should receive an email containing the required registration information for installing ChemDraw and the download should start automatically (it may take some time for the email to arrive, please be patient). On campus, the download should take about five minutes. It may take much longer elsewhere; if you have a slow internet connection you may want to consider downloading it on campus and then putting the .dmg/.exe file on a CD or flashdrive.

5) If you chose to Save rather than Run the file, once the download is complete, close your web browser and double-click on "cbdu1202.exe" (on a PC) or "cdbu1203.dmg" (on a Mac). You will probably get a question about whether you really trust Cambridge Labs, and in this case you can say yes.

6) Depending on the age of your computer, installation may take up to 30 minutes. You should not have to remove any old versions of ChemDraw.

7) Enter the platform-appropriate serial number (there is a different number for Mac and PC) that came in your e-mail when you first began the download.

8) When you first run the program, you will probably get an alert that the firewall is blocking ChemDraw. Tell the firewall to stop blocking it, or ChemDraw will cease to work.

The same installer file (the .dmg for mac or .exe for PC) and serial number can be used on other computers you would like to use of the same type, PC/Mac.