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LawtonKAR
LawtonKAR
Known Participant
September 14, 2026
Question

Acrobat certificate in Keychain keeps reappearing

  • September 14, 2026
  • 6 replies
  • 29 views

Acrobat certificate keeps reappearing in Keychain.

This is causing a problem with who the PDF’s are being sent too as they are not able to open them on their system.

The certificate as been deleted from Acrobat but is still in the keychain. It can be deleted from the keychain but keeps coming back.

Apple have recorded logs and evaluated them. This is their response.

In Logs - The issue appears to be contained entirely within Adobe's software. In the logs, it is seen that Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Desktop Service both react to the certificate deletion within seconds, querying the keychain for the missing item. The certificate is likely being restored by Adobe's own Digital ID management, which maintains it as part of its PDF signing feature.

They created a self-signed Digital ID in Adobe Acrobat for one-time PDF signing

- The certificate is being automatically restored to the macOS keychain after deletion

- The certificate does not appear in Adobe Preferences > Signatures > Digital IDs

- Recipients are unable to open PDF attachments that were signed with this certificate

Thank you for any helps with this.

    6 replies

    Amal Jaiswal
    Community Manager
    Amal JaiswalCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    September 14, 2026

    Hi @LawtonKAR

    I hope you are doing well, and thanks for the detailed write-up, that Apple log summary is genuinely helpful context.

    A few things that would help narrow this down:

    What version of Acrobat are you on (Help > About Acrobat for the exact build), and which macOS version?

    When you say the certificate was deleted from Acrobat, was that just via Keychain Access, or did you also check Acrobat's own Digital ID store under Preferences > Signatures > Identities & Trusted Certificates > click "More" > Digital ID Files? If the self-signed ID file is still listed there, that would explain Adobe Desktop Service re-syncing it back into Keychain even after you remove it manually, since that panel is Acrobat's actual source of truth for Digital IDs, not the Keychain entry itself.

    Does quitting Adobe Desktop Service (via Activity Monitor) before deleting the Keychain entry change anything, even temporarily?

    Can you confirm the exact error recipients see when opening the signed PDFs, just to confirm it's tied to this certificate specifically and not a separate signature validation issue?

    We're here to help, just need a bit more info to track this down properly.

    Regards,
    Amal

    LawtonKAR
    LawtonKARAuthor
    Known Participant
    September 14, 2026

    We’re running

    Acrobat Pro 2026.002.21901

    MacBook Pro M3 26.6.2

    Both up to date

    We first delete the certificate from Acrobat own Digital ID. And acrobat was installed and reinstalled.

    The certificate only shows up in Keychain now. But keeps coming back after being deleted.

    Yes it is defiantly this certificate. We can’t see the error but I have screen shot from my customer.

    Thanks

    Amal Jaiswal
    Community Manager
    Amal JaiswalCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    September 14, 2026

    Hi @LawtonKAR

    Thanks for the detail, that rules out one likely cause (the ID still being listed in Acrobat's Digital ID Files panel), since you've already removed it there and reinstalled.

    A couple of things still worth checking:

    Adobe Desktop Service: with Acrobat closed, open Activity Monitor and quit "Adobe Desktop Service" if it's running, then delete the certificate from Keychain Access. Does it stay gone while that process is off, or does it come back even then?

    On-disk signature files: separate from the Digital ID Files list in Acrobat's own preferences, Acrobat also stores signature-related files directly on disk (typically under ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/[version]/Security). Since you mentioned reinstalling, can you confirm whether that was a full clean reinstall (removing Preferences and Application Support folders for Acrobat), or a reinstall over the existing ones? If preferences/cache weren't cleared, a stale reference there could be what's regenerating the certificate.

    Exact error text: could you share the exact error message from your customer's screenshot? That would help confirm this is a signature validation failure specifically tied to this certificate, rather than something else.

    We're here to help, let us know what you find on the Adobe Desktop Service test in particular, that's the most useful next data point.

    Regards,
    Amal

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