Licence and trial
What the free edition includes, how the 30 day trial works, and how to activate, move or deactivate a licence, all without a network connection.
What the free edition includes
The free edition is not a viewer with a countdown. It opens files of any size and lets you work with them.
- Open CSV, TSV, compressed CSV, Parquet, JSON and Excel workbooks, whatever the row count.
- Move around, find, search every open file, and select.
- Filter and sort.
- Chart a column, build a pivot table, and colour cells and rows.
- Edit cells, drag-fill, reorder columns and rows, and add a computed column.
- Export to CSV or TSV, and save a representative sample of the rows.
What the paid editions add is covered under Free, Pro and Enterprise in Getting started. In short, Pro adds the bulk tools that rewrite values, plus SQL, joins, comparison, sessions, recipes, splitting a file into one file per value, and the other export formats. Enterprise adds redaction, compliance output and folder processing.
The 30 day trial
BigXL offers a 30 day trial that unlocks everything, at the Enterprise level, so you can evaluate the whole product rather than a subset.
The trial starts when you choose to start it, not when you first open the app, so installing early costs you nothing. Each computer is entitled to one trial. If a machine has already used its trial, BigXL says so plainly rather than silently restarting the clock.
When the trial ends
Nothing you made during the trial is touched. Files you cleaned, exported or saved are ordinary files on your disk and remain exactly as they are. Sessions and recipes you saved stay on disk too.
The app returns to the free edition. Features the free edition does not include are hidden rather than shown and then refused, on the principle that a control which looks ready and then declines is worse than no control at all.
Activating a licence
A licence is a key you paste into Settings. It carries its own signature, which BigXL verifies on your machine.
Paid editions do not disappear when annual coverage ends. Pro keeps all Pro features in every covered version. Enterprise keeps its cleaning, masking, export, audit and folder-processing features in every covered version. Active Enterprise assurance covers newer versions, detector and compliance-rule improvements bundled with those versions, technical support, and generating new compliance certificates. Certificates already saved to your computer remain available.
Activation does not contact a server. There is no account, no sign-in and no licence check at startup or during normal use. If you choose to check for an update, BigXL sends the signed licence key to bigxl.app to confirm current coverage. The app never sends your files or their contents. You can keep using a covered version without an internet connection.
Seats and machines
A key is issued for one machine. Eleven seats means eleven keys, each issued against the machine it will run on.
This means a licence is not a file you can copy between computers. Pasting a key minted for one machine into another will not activate it.
Moving to a different computer
While coverage is active, use Deactivate in Settings before you move. Send the deactivation receipt with the new Machine ID. The replacement key keeps the same edition and coverage date.
If the old computer is lost, broken or already returned to IT, ask support for a temporary key at no charge for the replacement computer. It lasts up to 30 days and can be reissued after it expires, up to 12 keys total. It stops at the end of the original coverage period. The replacement computer cannot change during this process.
After coverage ends, the covered version keeps working only on its licensed computer. It cannot be transferred or renewed for a different computer. A different computer requires a new full licence. Reinstalling on the same Machine ID uses the same key at no charge.
Checking what you are running
Settings shows the current edition, and the window shows an edition badge. If a feature described in this guide is not where the guide says it is, check the badge first. Features above your edition are absent from the menus rather than greyed out, so a missing menu item usually means an edition difference rather than a fault.