I bought your Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 and it has has worked perfectly until now. Now I get a message saying I have installed it too many times (I have only installed it 2 times)

The "Activation limit reached" error occurs because Adobe's licensing system registered your laptop's re-formatted hard drive as a completely new device, effectively consuming your second allowed activation. Because Photoshop Elements 14 is a legacy, non-subscription product, Adobe support agents can no longer manually reset activation counts. To resolve this, you must either find an old computer that still holds your original activation, launch the software, and choose Help > Deactivate, or you can attempt an offline activation by temporarily disconnecting your internet to bypass the stuck online server prompt. If neither option is available, the licensing block on the software is unfortunately permanent, and you would need to look into a newer version of the software.

Thanks for posting, ​@Help Seeker.

In addition to the questions and suggestions from ​@kglad and ​@Peru Bob please see 

 for information on how to manage any remaining activations for Photoshop Elements 14 in 2026.

Have you made any hardware changes (hard drive, mobo, RAM, etc.)?

If so, it may be seen as a different computer.

you must use a computer that has a current activation (and meets adobe’s security requirements) to restore an activation.  there’s no other way to recover an activation.

This is the Photoshop forum.

Please post your Photoshop Elements question in the Photoshop Elements forum:

https://community.adobe.com/photoshop-elements-714

Note: You will need to slightly change the wording of the title of the thread or you will receive a duplicate question error.