Note: if you are upgrading to VPOP3 version 5 or later from version 4 or earlier, please see How To Upgrade VPOP3 to version 5

Upgrading VPOP3 is a straightforward process. Download VPOP3 from our web site and ideally back up your current installation just in case something goes wrong. Then simply run the installer that you downloaded and install it over the top of your existing VPOP3. All your settings and mail will be preserved.

Note that if you are upgrading the Major version (eg 1.x to 2.x or 2.x to 3.x, etc) up to version 5 then you will need a new licence key. After version 5, then you can upgrade to any version using the same licence key, as long as your Software Maintenance is up-to-date (if you are not sure, you can put your licence details into our upgrade checker which will show the current state of your licence and Software Maintenance)

If you are upgrading several versions in one go (eg 1.3 to 7.8) then you can still do this in one step, you don't need to install the intermediate versions.

The two common pitfalls are:

• Downloading the wrong version (only applicable to v4 and earlier). Downloading the Enterprise version when you have a Standard licence or downloading the Enterprise Evaluation version when you have a registered version already installed will both cause problems when you try to start VPOP3 after the upgrade.
• Installing the VPOP3 software to the wrong folder. During the install process you will be prompted to choose the folder to install VPOP3 into. If you don't install the new version of VPOP3 into the same folder as the old one you will end up with a fresh install with no users or mail although some of the settings are stored in the registry so those will be preserved. VPOP3 is installed to C:\VPOP3 by default.

Sometimes (depending on your existing data) the upgraded version may take a long time to start up after the upgrade. This is because it has to migrate some data over from the old database system into the new one before it can start working. If this happens, you can opt to abandon the old data (which is not critical) and have VPOP3 just create blank tables instead of importing the old data. To do this, the usual culprit is the VPOP3\_database\spamfilter.db database file - so rename that to spamfilter.old and restart VPOP3. (Note that you can't import the old data later)

If you are unsure how to proceed with the upgrade, then we can do it for you, by remotely accessing your computer over the Internet. This is currently chargeable at £30 + VAT. See our Support page for details.

Note that we recommend performing the upgrade during UK office hours, so if you have a problem, you can contact us. We strongly recommend that if you have a problem during the upgrade, you contact us as a first step because a failed attempt to resolve the problem yourself will often make it much harder to fix. Support issues relating to problems during the upgrade procedure are not chargeable (but doing the full upgrade for you, or help with any reconfiguration afterwards will be chargeable).

If you can not do the upgrade during UK office hours, but need help, you can usually pre-arrange to have out-of-hours help, however, this will be chargeable, even if you have a support contract. Contact us for more information or to arrange this.

If you need to upgrade to a non-current version, then you can download the latest previous versions from the Download Previous Versions link on our downloads page

You should not downgrade from one version of VPOP3 to an earlier one without doing a fresh install, or a recover from a backup of the earlier version. Old versions of VPOP3 are not designed to be able to understand the data & configuration of the later versions.