CEB produces two major Essential Forms Judicial Council forms updates per year, typically in January and July. Installing these updates keeps your subscription current. In addition, if you subscribe to any county local forms add-on modules, you’ll be sent another link to install those modules separately. If the county/ies to which you subscribe update their forms, and/or if the Judicial Council releases new or revised forms that take effect any other time besides January 1 or July 1, the Essential Forms Updater will automatically download these updated forms modules over the Internet to your computer and notify you when they’re ready to install. Here’s how it works:

 Your Essential Forms subscription must be current. If a warning is displayed when you launch Essential Forms that “This program contains forms out of date as of…”, your Essential Forms Updater cannot check for updated forms. You’ll need to install a current Judicial Council forms update to restore your subscription to current status.

 When you open Essential Forms, the Essential Forms Updater will automatically launch as well, running in the background. When the Updater is running, you can find it in the notification area (bottom right-hand corner) of your Windows Desktop.

Note: You may need to click “Show hidden icons” to see all the icons in your notification area.

 Once per day, the Updater will check our server, and if any updates are available for your installed forms modules, it will automatically download them to your computer.

 Once the available forms modules have been fully downloaded, the Updater and Essential Forms will both notify you that those updates are ready to install.

 To install the updated forms module(s), close Essential Forms (and if you’re using it on a network, have all other users close Essential Forms as well) and reopen it. When Essential Forms opens, it will prompt you to install the updates.

 Simply click Yes and follow the prompts to install the update(s).

TIP: You can close the Updater, change its settings, or force it to check for updates by right-clicking on the Updater icon in the notification area and selecting the appropriate menu choice.

TIP: You can check to see which forms modules you have installed in Essential Forms by selecting Display Installed Modules from the View menu. The resulting pop-up window will list all the forms modules currently installed on your system, along with the release date of each currently installed module.