How do I download and install the free CSD-Community software Mercury and enCIFer?

Modified on Tue, 14 Jan at 2:18 PM

Free Mercury is only for Non-Commercial use. Please contact us at admin@ccdc.cam.ac.uk for Commercial use.

You can download a small online installer for Windows, Linux or MacOS from our Downloads page. This is the same installer as for the full CSD Portfolio but most of our software and data will not work without a licence.

Running this installer will allow you to select the software and data you would like to install - for our free products it is recommended that you select the option "I would like to only install the free CSD-Community products Mercury and enCIFer". Click the Details link for the version you need for brief installation instructions. We recommend uninstalling older versions of Mercury/enCIFer and any other CCDC software before installing the current version, and on Linux you need to make the installer executable before running it.

Before Mercury or enCIFer can be run it must be activated. No activation key is required for the free version - go to the CSD-Community tab in the activation tool and click Activate. The activation tool should pop up automatically the first time Mercury or enCIFer is launched. It can also be run manually if required - its location depends on your operating system. Here <INSTALLDIR> refers to the directory where Mercury and enCIFer were installed, normally a CCDC folder in your home directory.

Windows: <INSTALLDIR>\ccdc-utilities\software-activation\ccdc_activator_gui.exe
Linux: <INSTALLDIR>/ccdc-utilities/software_activation/bin/ccdc_activator_gui
Mac: <INSTALLDIR>/ccdc-utilities/software-activation/CCDC-Software-Activation.app

Some functionality is unavailable in the free version of Mercury - full details are in this blog post The difference between free Mercury and full licence Mercury. If you are interested in the full licensed version please contact us at admin@ccdc.cam.ac.uk with the name of your company or university.