2010-08-20

How to: Download templates from Avery (without providing your information)

Today I was looking for a template to use with some business card paper from Avery. Upon trying to download the template, I realized that it wouldn't let me without me giving it a valid email address. I really didn't want to, but I did anyways. Now, I'm writing this so that others that might happen to read it won't have to worry about giving Avery their personal information.

First, you need to figure out what template you want. Once you have done that, get to the part where it asks for your name and email address. Then, copy the text that's in the address bar of that window. (On Chrome, this wasn't an issue, but when I tried it in Firefox, the form requesting my information opened in a separate window, which made this part necessary.)

Here's where things start to get fun (and maybe somewhat tricky). Paste the text you copied from the address bar of the form's window into a new tab or window, but don't press [Enter] or go to the URI (yet); it needs to be modified to bypass the name and email form.

Look at the URI, and it should start out similar to this:
"http://www.avery.com/avery/secure/us_softwaredownload?locale=en_us&downloadId="

Depending on where you are trying this from, the part that says:
"us_softwaredownload?locale=en_us"
might be different. Regardless, this is the part between the first ampersand and the last forward-slash before it; this is also the part that needs to be modified.

Change it to:
"downloadprogress?tyurl="
and press the [Enter] key, click "Go"/an arrow, or whatever else you use to go to the URI. You should get the download page for the template you wanted; it should say "Downloading..." (or something similar), and provide a link to click if the download doesn't start automatically.

If you do try this, I'd appreciate a comment letting me know whether or not it worked for you. Thanks!

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