Acrobat XI Pro.

[gbsnplr]

I don't have a need for a subscription to Acrobat Pro since I am retired.  However I do need to fuction of Acrobat Pro at times.  I have version X for Mac and XI for windows.  I can install but I am unable to to get them registered, therefore I am unable to use the program.

What can I do to solve this issue?

[try67 · Accepted solution]

Adobe discontinued the activation servers for these versions, so you can't activate them online. You can try offline activation. See: https://exception.licenses.adobe.com/aoes/aoes/v1/t1?locale=en&linkId=100000275344881

But be aware these are very old and outdated versions, not compatible with any current OS. On a Mac it won't work at all on a new version of the OS. On Windows it might, but problems are to be expected.

[try67 · Accepted solution]

Adobe discontinued the activation servers for these versions, so you can't activate them online. You can try offline activation. See: https://exception.licenses.adobe.com/aoes/aoes/v1/t1?locale=en&linkId=100000275344881

But be aware these are very old and outdated versions, not compatible with any current OS. On a Mac it won't work at all on a new version of the OS. On Windows it might, but problems are to be expected.

[Diddlydoo]

Yeah, but XI Pro has a much better interface for PCs than DC did not seem to retain upon release.

Don't get me started on how difficult it is to find a needed tool if the user has no clue what the DC programmers decided as a universally understood name for the tool.

After 5 years of using DC at work while on my 11th year using XI at home, there is no question of the superior performing product is for me. I'll upgrade when Adobe clamps down on the users that purchased continuous user rights rather than feeding the Subscription Monster.

[try67]

Oh, I completely agree. XI was far superior to DC, and still is.

[AnandSri · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I hope you're doing well, and we apologize for the delayed response and the trouble.

As our community expert correctly mentioned, Acrobat 11 Pro has reached its End of Life (EOL) and End of Support (EOS). Support ended on October 15, 2017, and the activation servers are no longer available. For more details, refer to this article: Adobe Acrobat XI End of Support.

The suggested steps may or may not work, and we recommend upgrading to the latest version of Acrobat for the best experience.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

[Diddlydoo]

and yet I continue to keep mine XI Pro active and running; until death do one of us parts!

[Robert-Oz]

I agree.  I have 28.9G of carefully curated research over about 40 years and I access it most days. 

Here is an important tip: if you are using a computer that is not able to support W11, you will end up like me: I will be doing most of my work on the W11 PC, but I will be continuing to use the W10 machine for several tasks because on the one hand, I can't afford to pay the amazing Creative Cloud licences and I won't work with certain inferior "modern" (non-Adobe) products on the other.

[Robert-Oz]

Here is another tip:  All through my self-employed career I made regular backup images of my C drive.  That means I could always restore my programs with the least amout of hassle.  I only needed to deal with product registration issues when I needed to upgrade the OS and perhaps on one occassion back in the days of a spinning disk C drive that failed and needed to be replaced. 

MY current W10 PC has a reasonable chance of outliving me, so I will keep making periodic images of the C drive (which on an m.2 SSD), so I expect to have good use of my Acrobat Pro XI for the rest of my active mental life.  

[try67]

That won't work, I'm afraid. If you have a HD failure, for example, you won't be able to restore Acrobat from your backup to a new drive and still have it be activated. It has to be on the same physical computer. Even changing the motherboard will break the activation.

[Robert-Oz]

Hi Try67,  I think that is what I have been doing - new C drives in the same PC. 

For example when I switched two PCs from spinning C drives to internal Sata SSDs.  As I recall, I used the SAMSUNG migration tool to migrate each spinning C disk to its SSD then switched them in each computer.  AFAIR, both hummed along without a hitch. 

I think they were both portables and one them was replaced by my current W10 desktop (Acrobat needed reregistering, as it did my new W11 Desktop PC, a couple of days ago, which is what brought me here).

Because of the size of my research data I started investigating Everything and AgentRansack as potential alternative  replacements if my Acrobat Pro XI became unusable.  Everything is excellent for finding any file (only need to know one word, or part thereof, anywhere in the file name). 

AgentRansack is even better - it finds every instance of a string within any readable file across however many drives or directories I choose to search.  It is not as elegant as Acrobat's presentation of its index searches (eg: Acrobat shows pics that are on the same page), but it presents its findings as the expression within several lines either side of any instance in a document or as highlights on each page of an ASCII rendition (low elegance) of each document.  And it is so fast!

So I am ready for whatever might happen either way.  That is all any of us can do (according to the depth of our pockets).