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Participant
November 10, 2025
Answered

Adobe says my annual student license to the Creative Cloud is expired but it shouldn't

  • November 10, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 95 views

Hi everyone.

I'll try to explain myself as best as I can since English isn't my native language and this isn't an easy topic. In the evening of Saturday 8th I was using Adobe Color for a task and, since I wanted to save the palette in my library, I logged in, but before doing that Adobe asked me to add a secondary email, which I did.

(I'm telling this because maybe it has to do with what happened next).

After some time, I went to open Illustrator and a pop up told me that I had to buy it in order to use it. Which is odd, since on the 9th of October I activated my student annual subscription to the Creative Cloud. Needless to say, I slightly panicked. 

I have now a almost-year-long free trial (see screenshot for reference) and did everything I could to try and fix the problem on my hand of the things. In order, I:

  1. Signed out and logged in on CC
  2. Signed out, restarted my Macbook Air 15" (macOS Tahoe 26.0.1), AND logged in back again
  3.  Run the Limited Access Repair tool, which has found nothing
  4. Refreshed saved credentials, removed outdated Adobe certificates on Passkey 
  5. Even tried to check on the hosts files but found them clean as ever

Nothing has worked. Can someone please help me?

Correct answer Luisa_sa

Thank you all, @kglad and @Shivangi_Gupta.

Shortly after writing this post, I called Adobe customer service and was told it was a bug that turned my annual subscription into a year-long free trial. My subscription was deactivated and in a matter of days I'll have the code to activate it once more. 

3 replies

Luisa_saAuthorCorrect answer
Participant
November 10, 2025

Thank you all, @kglad and @Shivangi_Gupta.

Shortly after writing this post, I called Adobe customer service and was told it was a bug that turned my annual subscription into a year-long free trial. My subscription was deactivated and in a matter of days I'll have the code to activate it once more. 

kglad
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 10, 2025

thanks for the update.

kglad
Community Expert
Community Expert
November 10, 2025

start here, https://helpx.adobe.com/manage-account/kb/stop-creative-cloud-trial-mode-after-purchase.html

 

ONLY IF YOUR ACCOUNT SHOWS A SUBSCRIPTION WITH NO PAYMENT PROBLEMS, proceed to these steps -

 

https://helpx.adobe.com/enterprise/kb/resolve-trial-and-license-expired-errors.html

 

and if that fails, https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/adobe-license-issues-keychain-credential-mgr.html

 

additionally, below are solutions some users reported:

 

if those all fail, change your cc language. eg, try international english

if that fails, change the install location

Community Manager
November 10, 2025

Hi Zealous_vibrancy7160,

We are sorry for the trouble. I confirm you have an active plan for Creative Cloud pro. Do you have any other device to test the subscription functionality?

Let us know.


^Shivangi