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Inspiring
March 16, 2012
Question

How do you change the default installation location for Master Collection CS5?

  • March 16, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 1700 views

I'm on a 10.7.3 Mac.  Because my Applications directory is overflowing, to help me find things I moved all of the Adobe applications into the /Applications/Adobe folder.  After the move on startup applications would see that they had moved, and would ask for the system password so they could update with the new location.  Fine, not a problem.

The trouble started when I had to reinstall Lion (just the OS).  It broke some of the Adobe apps, so I tried to reinstall everything from scratch.  When you run the installer, it shows the install location (/Applications).  However there seems to be no way to change it (to /Applications/Adobe).  So I installed everything to /Applications, and moved them to /Adobe/Applications.  I then had to invoke each one so it knew it's new location.  Somewhat tedious, and several the apps crashed when doing the path update.  However this does seem to work.

There must be an easier way.  How can I install to somewhere other than /Applications?  I'm likely going to have to do this several more times (more Lion reinstalls due to FCP X issues) so I would really like to avoid this. 

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    1 reply

    Inspiring
    March 16, 2012

    Now the updates are failing.  After Effects, Fireworks, Flash, Indesign, Media Encoder and Premiere Pro created new folders in /Applications with invalid applications, For example there is an "Adobe Premiere Pro CS5" in a newly created /Applications Premiere Pro CS5 folder with a size of 49.4 mb.  You click on the application and it says that it is damaged.  There is also a Premiere Pro application in the /Library/Adobe folder.  It has a size of 756.7 MB, does run, and shows a version of 5.0.4.

    Adobe Application Manager says that Media Encoder, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional installation failed.  It also says that Adobe Extension Manager "has been moved or deleted improperly.  Please launch or reinstall the application to update the location ..."  I've launched it from /Applications/Adobe and it starts just fine.  Can't just reinstall (or deinstall)  it as it is not listed as an application in the "Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection" installer.

    Mylenium
    Legend
    March 16, 2012

    The application folder on a Mac is defined by a variable in some conf/ plist file somewhere which should be editable. Probably you can also change that per user session via the terminal. Perhaps some web search or a visit to a Mac geek forum might offer some insights...

    Mylenium