To activate Visual COBOL Personal Edition

When you activate Visual COBOL Personal Edition, you can use it for a limited period of 365 days. After this period, you can either register a new Personal Edition license for 365 days or acquire a valid license either for a 30-day trial or full license of Visual COBOL in order to continue using the product.

To activate Personal Edition:

Start Visual COBOL.
If you have not installed a license for Visual COBOL, starting the IDE for the first time after you install the product opens the Micro Focus Visual COBOL Product Licensing dialog box. If you cancel this dialog box, you can invoke it again from Help > Micro Focus > Product Licensing.
Click I want to activate the free product.
Ensure that the email address used to register the product is in the Email address text entry field. If you haven't registered your email address yet, click registration page and follow the instructions on that page.
Select one of the following options:
Automatic
Use this if you have Internet access.
1. Click Finish to activate your copy of Visual COBOL Personal Edition.
Manual
Use this if you are not connected to the Internet.
1. Click Next and then click Send email.
  This opens your default email client and creates a new email filled in with the details to email to Micro Focus about activating your copy of the free Personal Edition product.
2. Send the email.
3. If there is no mail client installed on your machine, copy the email address, the subject and the exact contents from the Email details fields and paste them into an email to sent to Micro Focus using a mail client of your choice. Do not modify or add to the text.
  You will receive a response email with information with details about your authorization request.
4. Paste the body text of the response email into the text entry field of the Manual Activation dialog box.
5. Click Finish.
  You should receive a message that the activation has been successful.
6. Restart Eclipse to complete the activation process.