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Participant
February 28, 2017
Question

Serial number and activation key for CS6 for MAC

  • February 28, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 81235 views

Hi

I worked as a consultant in 2012, the company I was working for bought me a license for Indesign and Photoshop CS6. I added it to my old MAC and now I want to install it on my new macbook air. However I don't have the serial number or activation key anywhere. How do I get a hold of those when they are not on my adobe page?

I have contacted customer service but they could not help as they do not offer technical support for these types of licenses.

PLEASE HELP

Regards

Sara

4 replies

Inspiring
March 2, 2017

Sara, if you do sort out your licence then there is a good chance CS6 will actually run on your brand new Mac.

Unfortunately there are a few people on these forums who endlessly repeat their 'CS6 will not work because it is not supported' mantra and 'it's a huge risk using CS6'. It is just their opinion and has no basis in fact - reinforced by the fact that they can never qualify why it won't work or why it is a huge risk.

Running the latest CC2017 is just as much a risk - or more of a risk if you read these forums and see the amount of people having problems with it. I use both versions every day and CC gives me far more problems.

The beauty of CS6 is that what you see is what you get and it just runs, whereas CC2017 is constantly having new bugs added.

Those of us who have stuck with CS6 and have it running beautifully on the latest Macs under the latest MacOS (Sierra) are referred to by them as 'lucky' - perhaps because we have software with very few bugs that runs very fast. CS6 runs now just like it always has.

Steve Werner
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 2, 2017

@Flaming,

We welcome you to the forum to provide support for the poor users of CS6 trying to install or run their software on recent operating systems. We usually have two or three of them every day! You'll be kept pretty busy. As you know, they are no longer supported by Adobe, and most of us forum regular have given up on them.

We could use your help and expertise.

Inspiring
March 2, 2017

Thanks Steve,

I do try to help CS6 users when I have time, but most times any practical advice I offer is drowned out by the 'it's not possible' brigade of forum regulars.

Then again those same forum regulars are kept very busy by the incessant floods of people who are having problems with CC, so it's surprising that they are able to spare the time to shoot down practical advice from others. But then I guess they don't waste any time checking their facts so it doesn't take them much time...

BobLevine
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 28, 2017

Without the serial number or proof of purchase, I’m afraid you’re probably out of luck. In addition, the chances of getting CS6 applications to work properly on a new Mac are not very high.

Legend
February 28, 2017

If this seems like a highjack, please disregard, but I think it might also be helpful.

The IT guy from my current company retired a while back, and the new IT guy can't find serial numbers or registration codes for some of our workstations. The old guy didn't keep the boxes and CDs well organized, and some can't be found, and we're not sure if CS5 or 5.5 were available as downloads. We all use CS5.5 currently, and when he asked Adobe, they said one of the 24-digit numbers that we have is "not a valid Adobe ID." We don't know if the old IT guy just never registered it (he didn't make an Adobe log-in), and a Read-Me on a backup looks like this:

We want to upgrade, but it's financially difficult to justify if we can make it work with what we have, but one of our workstations has gone to demo mode, and we'd like to get it back to working before it times out. Any ideas?

Dov Isaacs
Legend
February 28, 2017

CS5.5 was not a free upgrade from CS5. If your group is running CS5.5, running the CS5.5 installer using the CS5 serial number isn't going to work. CS5.5 upgrades came with their own serial numbers to be entered. If CS5 wasn't previously installed, it would prompt for the CS5 serial number as well.

Unless you bought a volume license for your organization and the vendor still has records of your purchase and serial number(s), since you didn't register with Adobe and their was no Adobe ID, there isn't much Adobe can assist you with.

          - Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
Derek Cross
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 28, 2017

InDesign CS6 probably won't work on your new Mac. Which OS does it have?

Peru Bob
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 28, 2017

Have you contacted the company?

They may have a volume license, in which case they still "own" it.

Participant
March 1, 2017

The customer service say that it is a volume license... But I don't know if any one has kept it....