ArcGIS Software

Access to ESRI GIS software is available to UB affiliates in the following ways:

• All UB students are eligible to receive a free student edition copy of ArcGIS - One Year Education Use Only for their personal computers (available while attending UB). To obtain a copy, please email kf43@buffalo.edu. To expedite the process, include your UB Person Number in your email message. 
• ArcGIS software is loaded on public workstations in Cybrary and other labs and may be accessed by students.
• Depending on your UB Academic Program, you may have user privileges to departmental GIS laboratories such as in Geography, Geology, Anthropology, Urban Planning and others. Check with your department to determine GIS software availability and user access restrictions in departmental labs.
• Faculty and Staff are eligible for permanent installations of ESRI software on their UB owned office computers. They must request an ESRI software account from UB's site license administrator by submitting a CASet's GIS-ESRI Support form. The software account request form with instructions is available from the Campus User's Guide for Accessing ESRI Software.

ArcGIS Help Library

ESRI help for ArcGIS Desktop 10 is available. It provides programming help and explanations to situations throughout the software.

ArcGIS and Mac OS

Do you want to use ArcGIS on your Mac? Refer to these pages for ideas for running the software on a dual boot system or virtual machine:

• Run ArcGIS Pro on a Mac (Esri)
• Installing ArcGIS on a Mac (Harvard University Center for Geographic Analysis)
• Running ArcGIS on a Mac (SFSU Institute for Geographic Information Science{College of Science & Engineering)

Course Offerings

Our subscription includes over 500 E-Learning courses that UB affiliates are eligible to enroll in free of charge. Users may complete the lessons at their own pace and courses are valid for one year. As a general rule, please allow 2-4 hours to complete workshops and approximately 18-24 hours to complete courses.

You can view the courses available to our organization through the ESRI Training Catalog. Check the boxes for Maintenance and Free to see our selection and add to your learning plan.

You may also view all courses available to the public by de-selecting Maintenance and Free. These include courses authored by third-parties outside of ESRI and are not included in our standard subscription, but, are available for purchase separately.

Visit the ESRI Training and Education website for more assistance in finding the right course learning path that best suits your needs.

ESRI Registration Set-Up

In order to access our E-Learning subscription courses, complete and submit the ESRI E-Learning Registration form.  

You will be notified when you have been added to our Organization. You can then sign up for an ESRI Account and get started.

• Note: If you have already registered with ESRI, you will just need to join our Organization on your existing account to access our courses.

On subsequent visits, you will use the same user name and password to re-enter 'My Training', for access to your virtual GIS training and course transcript records.

Courses are available for up to one year from the date of registration for your completion and repeated access. After one year they will be expired, however, they will still remain listed on your course transcript permanently. You may also re-register and repeat any courses as needed.

Course certificates (.pdf format) are instantly made available to users upon completion of each course module and after completing the final course exam. Tip: In addition to your course transcripts, make sure to save electronic copies of your certificates, as some academic programs require ESRI modules to be completed as either prerequisites and/or required coursework.