Old Windows Installation Files

Actual separate installer files are pretty much nonexistent, as anyone that had already had a CC subscription would obtain new versions/updates through CC’s background installer mechanism and those “silent” installer packages were never retained after the fact.

Trial installers (up to 2019) were more widely available “in the day” through redirection links from places like prodesigntools, but these referral links have long since been disabled by Adobe. 2022 were definitely not available that way. Versions after 2019 may have been available at some point as trial installers straight from Adobe, but, of course, are replaced with the current versions as they came out, so unless you find someone that retained one of the actual packages from back then, you will be out of luck. That and the fact these installers would only install the base version with no updates/bug fixes possible.

Hi all,

Thank you for reaching out. For guidance on accessing older versions of Creative Cloud applications, check out this helpful discussion.


Thanks,

Harshika

Thanks Bobby and Bill.  Interesting to understand that newer machines may not be easily compatible with older versions of Ai.  That said - I have installed CS5.5 on new machines (the last version I actually had DVDs of!) and they seem to have run fine.  I miss physical media.  I miss “owning” products I pay for.

As you could probably see from similar discussion threads Adobe employees have been able to provide installer links to users for versions not too awfully old, such as Illustrator 28. If you’re looking for a version 26 build of Illustrator it might be more difficult. Version 27 was released in the fall of 2022. IIRC that was the first version of Illustrator that lacked any Pantone spot color books. I’m guessing it might be more difficult for anyone from Adobe to provide links to version 26 or earlier installers to the issues with those Pantone color books. IMHO, the situation with Pantone is just ridiculous, but that’s a whole other topic.

Even if you could find the older version that you seek it is possible that it would not run properly on a brand new machine. Newer computers tend to be manufactured for compatibility with the most recent versions. Since there are many brands out there of Windows based computers it may be a matter of luck of the draw as to whether an older version of Illustrator would perform as you need on a new computer.

They are not publicly available anywhere anymore unfortunately.