Serial number is not valid - Acrobat X Standard

[calebu2]

Good morning,

Just upgraded my PC and tried to move my Acrobat X Standard license over - unfortunately it says "This serial number is not valid for this product" even though the product was installed from the same installer file as the original PC.

I assume this is a "Sorry we don't support Acrobat X any more and aren't even going to try to help you", but want to see if there is something I can do to transfer over the license file (e.g. copy registry entries from the , set up my own authentication server).

Failing that does anybody have any recommendations for PDF editors that don't cost more than my Disney Plus subscription? I don't use it enough to justify this expense - I'm just more annoyed that Adobe would shut down its authentication servers and not release a patch to the software that auto approves the license key.

[calebu2]

Never mind. Bit the bullet and bought a lifetime license for Acrobat DC 2019. Thanks for still offering lifetime licenses!

[try67]

They're not, actually. If you bought it, it was not directly from Adobe, so be very careful.

[calebu2]

I was sure to download the software directly from Adobe's website. Took a while to find the 2019 version. But at least I can use this version until I upgrade my PC.

[jamesm98580762]

I have the same problem. Where did you find the 2019 version. I wouldn't mind biting the bullet.

[calebu2]

This is amazing. I got a message on this forum from William Taylor pretending to be Adobe support telling me to email him at Adobe.Tech at a popular email service managed by Microsoft.

So either Adobe can't afford their own separate email server and are relying on the co-hosted outlook.com server or they can't afford technology to monitor the DMs on this forum! Makes you wonder where all the monthly subscription fee money goes to!

Yet somehow, they paid an engineer to update the licensing server to say EOL for Acrobat X rather than simply grandfathering anybody who spent $100s on a license into a perpetually usable version.

[try67]

It's the latter. There are plenty of scammers here, unfortunately.

If someone contacts you saying they are from Adobe they MUST have an "Adobe Employee" tag under their name, and use an @adobe.com email address.

[calebu2]

So I could understand why this would be the case if this was reddit or some unaffiliated Adobe fan forum. But this is community.ADOBE.com and the only person who had replied to anything I have posted here are (a) a scammer and (b) a "Community Expert".

I'm stunned that a company making at least $10 a month off selling subscriptions to an app that essentially hasn't changed in 10 years can't afford to have moderators paid by the company itself.

You have been incredibly helpful with your posts, but you yourself aren't an Adobe employee.

I find it infuriating that an application I spent hundreds of dollars on back in the early 2000s has been EOLed in such a way that it cannot be reinstalled due to a lack of license servers. I shouldn't have to buy a separate copy of an outdated version of Acrobat DC 2019 in order to avoid having to pay a subscription fee if the company running it cant even maintain a support forum.

I get that it is the week between Christmas and new years, but I haven't received a single communication from adobe.com about either my licensing issues for Acrobat X or the spammer who pretended to be Adobe. I guess the biggest give away should have been that the scammer responded!

I guess I'll ask this another way - are there non-subscription non-Adobe software solutions on Windows 11 that would allow me to quickly and easily scan from a scanner into PDF format? I'm not trying to do rocket science with Acrobat - just a few things that aren't included in the free reader.