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Adobe Creative Cloud Activation/Deactivation Issues

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
April 3, 2013
20 replies
49082 views

The current way to activate and deactivate devices is a fairly frustrating experience. Especailly when you have more than 2 devices. With Creative Cloud, there needs to be a way to activate or deactivate a device remotely. I know that currently only 2 devices can be activated within each Creative Cloud account at once. That's okay. But if the user has 3 computers (one of which is a laptop) and they are out of the office and need to use the 3rd device (the laptop) there is no way currenly (as far as I know) to deactivate one of the two office devices in order to activate the 3rd device (the laptop). Am I mistaken or is there a better way to manage your Creative Cloud activations and deactivations? Is this feature going to be available to users in the future?

What would be ideal is if one could log onto their Adobe Creative Cloud account and see a list of their devices (which they've previously named) right there and simply activate and deactivate their devices whenever they need to. That way, you can be out of the office and not be stuck with no way to remotely activate another device on your account.

Is there any hope for this?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer David__B

This behavior has improved for Adobe as well. From the account management page a user can remotely deactivate specific devices. See this article showing the workflow: Sign in and sign out to activate Creative Cloud apps

Activated%20Devices%20new.jpeg

Show previous replies

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Hal Jalikakik

Participant

Agree 100%

Microsoft's model is more of a family sharing type thing, and we don't expect Adobe to allow us to invite other people, but we should be allowed a similar model.

Microsoft Gives You:

5 mac installs

5 pc installs

5 smartphone

5 tablet

5 cloud drives

and a bunch of other stuff. If Adobe did something like 3 computers of any kind, 1 phone and 2 tablets, I would be satisfied. It is simply no longer uncommon to have 3 computers. 1 supercomputer desktop at work, a home iMac or family computer and a laptop. This should be the standard.

Please Adobe. If you can't do the above, at least make it easy to log out where and when we want.

CMusson3

Participant

Agree 100%

Flexible device management on the fly (whilst keeping the existing limits if this isn't possible to change) would really make CC a much better user experience and remove a lot of frustration for those with multiple devices.

In truth I would even be willing to pay an additional fee per active install if that's what it took to increase flexibility.

Really hope you could explore these options for the creative userbase

richardault

Participant

Please Adobe, implement this feature. Or alternately increase the licensed machine count for a single account to 3 machines. Please please please. I know I am far from alone in this regard. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

M

mkarrow

Participant

I disagree Gtunglaub. The original post was about deactivating single devices, not both of them. My use case is, I'm sitting at work trying to use my work laptop (third device), worrying what might happen if I force my personal laptop at home to sign out, when it definitely has Photoshop open with images I really hope are saved. The second computer, on the other hand, has no adobe products open and can be safely signed out.

I'd really like to sign -just- that computer out.

queenjac

Participant

I agree; Gtunglaub may have misunderstood or failed to read OP. Every other subscription site I use offer this type of remote activation/deactivation. The only reason I even found this post is because my husband's tablet was stolen from my son's dorm room; of course one that's signed-in on CC. Now the ONLY option available to us is to overload the number activations by installing cc on 2 other computers! What if we ONLY have ONE ADDITIONAL computer?!

ADOBE IS REALLY BEHIND THE CURVE ON THIS FEATURE/ISSUE!!!

Thankfully, we do have more than 1 additional computer. HOWEVER, WE MUST NOT ONLY TAKE THE TIME TO INSTALL CC AND SIGN IN ON 2 OTHER DEVICES, WE MUST CHANGE OUR PW BECAUSE POTENTIALLY THE THESE THIEF(VES) OR SOME SUBSEQUENT PERSON(S) COULD HAVE THE MEANS TO CRACK PASSWORDS OR USE SOME PASSWORD RECOVERY SOFTWARE.

IT IS JUST ALL ONE HUGE AND UNNECESSARY HEADACHE TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH IN THE AFTERMATH OF YOUR KID'S DORM BEING BURGLARIZED!!!

This is the FIRST time ANY one in my family has EVER had their residence BURGLARIZED. This thief(ves) even took our son's NCAA trophy (Final Four)!!!

IT IS UNACCEPTABLE THAT I CANNOT GO ONLINE SIGN INTO CC, DEACTIVATE/BLOCK THIS DEVICE FOREVER, CHANGE MY PW AND BE DONE WITH THIS PART! THE TIME IT'S GOING TO TAKE US TO INSTALL AND LOGON TWICE COULD AND SHOULD CERTAINLY BE BETTER SPENT!

G

Gtunglaub

Participant

This has been fixed, should be marked answered... You can sign out of all devices anytime you log in and 2 licenses are in use, works like a charm.

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CliveCarpenter

Participant

I've just had a scenario where I made a mistake with deleting a copy of Photoshop with de-activating. The problem cam about when I loaded Photoshop onto an old laptop. I already have an installation on my desktop machine. Because Photoshop was running too slowly on the laptop, I deleted Photoshop, but forgot to de-activate it first. I bought a new laptop and when I tried to run Photoshop I got the error telling me to de-activate all iterations of Creative Cloud, so that I can run the software on the new laptop. I checked with Adobe support in a chat to ensure that wasn't going to cause a long term problem with my desktop machine and the support person I spoke with is convinced that I am unable to have to machines with Photoshop active on both. He says that I must de-activate my desktop machine before using my laptop and vice versa. Surely that's not correct?

NoobieAdobe

Participant

As everybody above has said, it is fairly inconvenient to activate and deactivate multiple devices. A remote/online device authorization feature needs to be implemented for all legitimate paying users. For a company that offers so many creative products this feature almost seems no-brainer. It would be natural fit in the Adobe Creative Cloud app. The tabs across to top could be:

Home - Apps - Assets - Community - Devices

Please Adobe, make this happen for all your loyal customers.

-Kendall

A

Abadke

Participant

I agree with what has been said above, and I myself have just run into the same problem, which led me to this forum.

It looks like this suggestion hasn't gained traction in the last year so as a community we should attempt to make this issue the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

There are monthly releases happening in CC now, so if there is a way to get this bumped up on the priority list we should attempt to do it. To this end i have referred to this thread in an online site survey, and tweeted this thread to @adobe and @adobecare and i encourage everyone reading this thread to do the same.

Adobe I love and use your software a lot, and for me I do not want to use an alternative, however i would really like to see this (what i see as a commodity in a cloud based environment) feature implemented.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers

Andy

W

wired.au

Participant

C'mon Adobe, if you're going to force everyone to use activation like that, at least listen to your customers and make it a painless procedure.

When I sign out of my laptop, I still can't activate on my home desktop as the activation limit has been reached.

People who use pirated software have less hassles than people who pay for genuine software. It is ridiculous.

R

r_d_stevens

Participant

Please take this request seriously Adobe.

David__B

Adobe Employee

Hi DMH79,

There is another option for the scenario you described called Deactivate All, this option only appears when attempting to install and use the products on a third computer when having already activated on two previously (and not deactivated them). This option deactivates all the computers or resets the activation process so you can activate on the third computer and on one of the prior two next time you go to use them.

Hope that helps,

-Dave

D

DMH79Author

Inspiring

Hi David!

Thanks for your response. I am aware of that "Deactivate All" message that you describe...but here is the problem: Last time I got that message, it was a Friday evening of what happened to be a long holiday weekend. I clicked "deactivate all" and then a message came up saying there was an error of some sort and that I had to contact customer service to help activate/deactivate my devices. Well, that's all fine and good except Customer Service wasn't gonna be around for 3 or 4 more days so I was out of luck.

I ended up having to install FCPX trial on that computer (my Adobe trials had all ended) and then updating it and then doing the project. Needless to say, 6 hours later I had my project completed on what should have been a 30 minute job on Premiere Pro. It was a nightmare.

I know Creative Cloud is going to be the way Adobe deals with software licensing going forward which is fine but is there any way to get around the issue that I just described? Is there any way to implement the option to "go online and into your Adobe account and see your listed devices and activate/deactivate from there if you'd like"? That would be ideal in this situation and make things SO much easier.

David__B

Adobe Employee

Hi DMH79,

Thank you for the additional insights about what happened. I know our developers are open suggestions for improvements. I'll see if I can find your interactions with our support department and pass the info and your suggestions here.

-Dave

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