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Vincent323324218wm9
Participant
February 16, 2026
Question

Cannot install Illustrator 28.0

  • February 16, 2026
  • 4 replies
  • 33 views

Hello, We have $7k worth of plugins from a third party, which never expire; however, they only work with Illustrator 28.  Adobe Creative Cloud no longer offers versions prior 29.  How can we get this older version? Thanks, Vincent

4 replies

Anubhav M
Community Manager
Community Manager
February 20, 2026

Hello ​@Vincent323324218wm9 

 

Thanks for reaching out. Could you confirm the version of the OS installed and your Adobe ID (email address) so we can better assist you?

 

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

Community Expert
February 20, 2026

I think Adobe should relax its policy on prior versions of Creative Cloud. It's not good for some users to get their work flow impacted because they can't use a build of Illustrator two or more versions back from the current build.

 

People make mistakes and accidentally remove prior versions of Illustrator when installing a newly released version. There is no undo button when making that mistake.

 

The original poster of this thread is using expensive industry specific plugins for Illustrator. It is very common for the makers of such plugins to take a long time to update those plugins to make them compatible with the current version of the host application. In the sign industry there are people using third party Illustrator plugins to control vinyl cutter/plotter machines. Depending on the brand of plugin it may go a long time between updates. Those users are taking a serious gamble if they update to a new version of Illustrator and remove the previously installed version. There is no guarantee the plugin is going to be forward compatible with the new version of Illustrator.

 

I still have Illustrator 28 installed alongside version 30 due to a different work flow issue. At my work place I move a lot of artwork between CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator. There were already existing pain points with taking .AI files exported by CorelDRAW and opening them in Illustrator. With versions 29 and 30 of Illustrator, if I try to open an .AI file exported by CorelDRAW and that file contains any live text objects the file won't open. I'll see the good old "Illustrator could partially read this file" error box. The file opens with a blank page and no content. I have to open the .AI file in Illustrator 28 and then re-save it so it will open in Illustrator 30.

 

It's good that Adobe offers all the previous builds of the previous version of Illustrator. If they would offer older versions to download/install in the CC app it might be good enough for them to just offer the last final build of that version. In the case of Illustrator 28 that would be version 28.7.10. They could do the same for version 27, 26 and how far back they would be willing to go. I think offering Illustrator builds back as far as version 25 would be good enough.

 

Also, I think users needing those older versions would probably accept the fact those versions are no longer getting any sort of updates; they would have to accept any remaining technical issues that might exist with those builds.

creative explorer
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 20, 2026

@Bobby Henderson whenever I update my software, I always keep my previous version just in case—I need to roll back. I guess, I have learnt from the past and you just do what is necessary. That’s why I am always surprised people are so gung-ho on updating to the greatest updates. I usually wait a week to 2 weeks, because jobs are on a deadline, and updating an app mid-stream a job can be, well, nasty! 

There must be a good reason why they don’t offer previous version more than the previous build? 

m
Community Expert
February 20, 2026

The only reasons I can think of for why Adobe makes only the immediate previous version of their apps available is to save on server space and also reduce a certain amount of customer support that could be related to older versions. My feeling is if they offered downloads of Illustrator versions 28 down to maybe version 25 the end user would be on their own. The builds wouldn’t be “officially supported.” That’s how I would handle it.

I might be quick to upgrade to the latest versions of Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. I even try out the beta applications to test upcoming new features. But I don’t upgrade and remove old versions. You never know what sort of compatibility issues might occur.

I don’t know why my previous reply to you didn’t go underneath your post. It went out to the root portion of the discussion “tree.”

creative explorer
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 20, 2026

@Bobby Henderson ditto, I am using a MacBook that has Illustrator 28.0 and was undecided if I wanted to use the OpenCore Legacy Patcher for my Macbook so that it can run Tahoe and the other latest versions… than thought, I can just add the newer apps on my wife’s PC instead. Problem solved. Except, I am not a big fans of PC! This is one of the reasons why I have ‘Auto-update’ turned off on my MAC and her PC as well because of all these weird bugs. 

I do see the app on my MAC, but I don’t think the 3 gig app would actually work that way by dragging it to the Cloud and letting someone else use it—even if they legitimately purchased it. Adobe Support should be able to provide you the legit downloadable link. 

If not, you could use Wayback Machine? Maybe not as secured...

m
Community Expert
February 16, 2026

I would try contacting Adobe’s customer support and see if they could help and give you a download link to a version 28 installer. The installers in the Creative Cloud app go back only one version. I’m trying to protect an Illustrator 28 installation on my setup due to a different issue with versions 29 and 30.