Chemdraw 18 Professional activation

Not possible, has to be done manually via GUI once per machine. Response from PerkinElmer Inc.:

Unfortunately we don't have bulk or silent activation options for Mac OS, only for Windows.

@davidhiggs Has anyone found any luck in scripting the activation?

I worked around this activation by hiding the ChemDraw application itself in the Finder, using the command

chflags hidden "/Applications/ChemDraw 18.app"

and "replacing" it with an AppleScript application, named "ChemDraw Prime 18". The only thing this does is "hold down" the Option key while launching the real ChewDraw app, which instructs ChemDraw to use the older style of activation used prior to v16, where an license code was stored in /Library/Preferences/com.cambridgesoft.plist. You would need to contact your account manager to obtain the license keys to make this work, and distribute the plist to your clients.

Here's the contents of the AppleScript:

tell application "System Events"
    key down option
    tell application "ChemDraw 18.0"
        activate
        tell application "System Events"
            key up option
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

This definitely has its flaws, especially when running under Mojave - macOS will prompt the user if "ChemDraw Prime 18" should be allowed to control "ChemDraw 18", which will probably thoroughly confuse the user - but it's the best that I could come up with at the time.

I tried AppleScirpt but ChemDraw 18 is asking Serial number and Registration Code. How I can get these? Because, they only provide activation code.

I'm linking to the admin guide that I found on their site (with difficulty). They provide some instructions for Mac, but it's pretty clumsily written, so I'll summarise:

1. Create a plain text file called Activate.ini, in which the sole line should read: Activation Code=<your 16 digit/19 character activation code>
2. Deploy both Activate.ini and the main ChemDraw application into /Applications

On first launch, the activation code will be applied, a dialog will appear to confirm, and (in theory) Activate.ini will be deleted. There's no true "silent" activation.

@deej That's for V19.

@deej Thanks! @jaugust This worked wonderfully for ChemDraw 20--not sure if 18 is compatible (though I know this is an old post).

@deej @jaugust @jgrant  Can you tell me where the Activate.ini file should go?  On a Windows computer I have to put it in C:\\ProgramData\\PerkinElmerInformatics\\FNE\\21.0\\.  Does it go in a similar place on a Mac?  It seems like the similar location on a mac would be Users/Shared/com.perkinelmer.chemdraw.21/FNE.  Thanks!

For all versions, including v20 and 21, it goes into: /Applications/Activate.ini

One line, and one line only:

Activation Code=<your 16 digit/19 character activation code>

Activate.ini must be readable by users.

Add "chflags hidden /Applications/Activate.ini" to your PKG or your policy to hide its unMacliness from the world.