How to manually update a Magento extension?

Make sure you have FTP/SFTP access to copy the extension files to your Magento installation.

1. Navigate to “System → Cache Management” and disable/clean all Magento caches.
2. Put a file named maintenance.flag in your Magento root directory
3. Upload the extension directories “app”, “js”, "skin" etc. to your Magento root directory (“app”⇒“app” and “js”⇒“js” and so on).
4. After your upload, on the next page request, Magento will internally run all things required for the update.
5. Remove the file named maintenance.flag from your Magento root directory.
6. Navigate to “System → Cache Management” and refresh/reactivate all caches.

Done!

Note: For other third party extensions it always makes sense to read the installation and update instructions from the third party.