Serial number and activation key for CS6 for MAC

[saraa65073090]

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

[Peru Bob]

Have you contacted the company?

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

[saraa65073090]

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

[Derek Cross]

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

[BobLevine]

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.

[Migintosh]

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]

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

[Migintosh]

Thanks Dov. I thought it was going to go that way, but I thought I should ask. We're kind of in limbo thanks to our old IT guy, but it is what it is, and we'll probably have to upgrade before we thought we would need to.

[saraa65073090]

I do have a proof of purchase. I have a receipt. But Adobe customer service still would not help me...

[Laubender]

  wrote

I do have a proof of purchase. I have a receipt. But Adobe customer service still would not help me...

Hi Sara,

I contacted Adobe STAFF behind the scenes.

Think, you would be contacted by a personal message via forum software or through mail address that comes along with your Adobe ID  soon. That's all we can do here in the InDesign forum. We MVPs and ACPs are only volunteers here.

But: Even if you get the licensing issue straight, you would be very lucky if you could run CS5, CS5.5 or CS6 flawlessly on a new MacBook Air. See what Bob said in reply 3.

Regards,
Uwe

[saraa65073090]

Hi Uwe

Thank you so much for your help! That is much appreciated!

Regards

Sara

[Rajashree Bhattacharya]

Hi saraa65073090,

I have send you a PM, please check & respond.

Regards

Rajashree

[saraa65073090]

Hi Rajshree

I have sent you a mail. Thank you so much

Regards Sara

[flaming1]

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]

@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.

[flaming1]

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...

[Derek Cross]

I've never seen any "drowning out" as you put it, on this friendly forum. You're entitled to your opinion about InDesign CS6 running under El Capitan and Sierra as others have, to a different view.

[flaming1]

Thanks Derek, I agree that this is generally a friendly and useful forum.

But you're very wrong if you think I'm giving my opinion. I'm giving facts based on real world experience. I never claim that these answers are absolute because as Uwe says, there are any number of other factors than can tip things over - with any version of Indesign.

Something that works for me personally on a given set-up may not work for all others, but it does allow me to state as fact that it is possible and can work, and so this information might be used and useful to others.

But, there are a few forum regulars who give opinions based on their views, which are not supported by facts, and they do bury the useful answers by the very frequency with which they post their opinions as answers.

A case in point was where an answer was posted that addressed the OPs problem and fixed it for them, and for a number of other people. The 'marked correct' answer was given as your problem is running CS6 'downgrade your OS or upgrade to CC'. When it was pointed out that the actual answer had been given further down the thread and suggested that it should be marked as correct, the regulars jumped in and rubbished the suggestion with their opinions.

How is that useful?

[Steve Werner]

To be clear, I don't say that you can't install or use CS6 on new operating systems. I say that it appears that most people have problems when they do so, judging by the number of reports we see. And if they have problems, there is very little they an do since there will never be an upgrade to fix problems. And they will get no support from Adobe when doing so.

[flaming1]

You can't seriously say 'most people' with any sort of conviction Steve.

You only see people who come here with problems. All the people who have it running successfully generally wouldn't visit to tell you that they have no problems. We have no idea how many people are running it without any issues.

Using your criteria you could say with equal conviction that 'most people have problems when they install and try to use Indesign CC2017', judging by the number of reports you see on this forum. That is presumably not the case.

If people have problems with CS6 they can come here and ask, just like the people who come here to seek help with CC2017 problems. There should be no difference.

And nobody should realistically expect Adobe to give them any support on a personal level. If that was an option forums like this would have very little reason to exist, and yes I have had significant amounts of time wasted trying to get Adobe support in the past.

If Adobe were interested in listening to and supporting their customers they would have kept a perpetual licence. This bit is just my opinion... and that of tens of thousands of other Adobe customers...

[Steve Werner]

But I haven't run CS6 for at least four years. I think that's true of a lot of the people who help out here.

I'm also a teacher and consultant. Only a small number of people I teach or consult with use CS6 or earlier any more. (Honestly, those who hold onto old software don't bother spending money on training or consulting.) MId- and large size companies have almost entirely migrated to the Creative Cloud. Students I teach in training companies and at the university get a subscription.

While I like to volunteer and help here, there isn't much interest for me to load old software. And if we discover a problem, what could I say. There's no updates coming.

That's why I'm happy you're going to stick around here and help. We need more people like you!

[flaming1]

All understood Steve. As I said, I don't expect people to load CS6 just to work out how to troubleshoot it.

But it is frustrating to know that there are people on this forum who obviously have a fairly significant knowledge of the software, but answer every CS6-related question with 'it's not supported', 'it won't work on retina Macs', 'you need to upgrade to CC', 'you need to downgrade your OS' or something similar.

Why not 'people have got CS6 running successfully on modern Macs' and suggest a search of this forum.

There are a lot of very useful answers from people on this forum. I'm trying to add to them where I can, but having to repeatedly refute the 'won't work' answers is something that shouldn't really be necessary.

There are countless people who cannot afford the significant long term cost of upgrading to CC and countless others who don't want to lose access to their files by upgrading to CC (which WILL happen if they ever stop paying). Both these arguments against upgrading have long since been hashed out, but they are still real issues that will keep people on CS6 for some time to come.

[Laubender]

Hi flaming1​,

I would not doubt that it's possible to install CS6 on the latest OSX.

The problems could arise after installing and running InDesign CS6.

Some features could not work anymore or show strange behavior.

So it would depend on what features are used by an individual if problems arise or not.
The next thing is: What exact version is installed? 8.0, 8.0.1, 8.0.2 or 8.1 ?
Some people tell, that they are not able to install the latest bug-fix version 8.1 because it cannot be found as an update.

Or if someone migrated the OSX version from an older version or started a fresh install of the OS with a blank harddisk. That could make a big difference. For the better or the worse.

Running other software in the background while using InDesign could also be a problem.

For example browser extensions for Chrome browser.

There are so many factors that can contribute to an eratic behavior of CS6 on the latest OSX.

And it could be that every time a new minor update is installed with the OS things could change. Of course that would also apply to other versions of inDesign. But the point is that bug fixing will not be done with CS6 anymore.

On a personal note:
I am running CS6 8.1.0 succesfully on 3 OSX versions: 10.6.8, 10.7.5 and 10.10.5.

I hesitate to update my OSX to the latest version.

Workarounds for all that:
Running older OSX versions in a virtual machine.

Regards,
Uwe

[flaming1]

Hi Uwe

I agree with most of what you say. The issue that occurs fairly frequently on this forum is people who are respected for their broad knowledge on Indesign saying flat out that it is not possible to run CS6 on current MacOS or that it doesn't work with retina screens.

I'm guessing that those same people have never even tried running CS6 on modern systems. I don't expect them to as they, like a lot of others have fallen into the CC system and don't have any need to use CS6 any more. But, if they have no knowledge of the realities of using it then they should refrain from making absolute statements on a subject they don't understand.

As you say, any version of Indesign can be made unstable by OS updates or people using third party extensions to other software, so there is no greater risk to use CS6 than there is to use CC2017. You say yourself that problems 'could' occur using CS6, not 'will' occur.

And while it is obvious that CS6 will not be getting bug fixes from Adobe, from my long history of working with Adobe products - and Indesign since version 1.5 in particular - I can categorically tell you that a lot of bugs are never fixed.

I can also say that CS6 will never have any new bugs introduced but CC2017 will definitely gain new bugs with every update. CC2015 ended it's life with a fair few irritating bugs still unfixed. I suggest that they will also never be fixed because Adobe have now moved on to CC2017.

On a personal note, I run Indesign CS6 (the full versions, not the CC version) every day and all functions work as well as they ever did. It is extremely fast on a brand new iMac using Sierra. I also use CC2015 every day and experience some crashes, palettes that disappear, workspaces that can't be applied, and things like the layers palette losing its little boxes so that I can't move things between layers. trashing and restoring preferences of course fixes these, most times, but they all return after a fairly short time. Restoring preferences often causes the CC syncing preferences to disappear so that every time you make a new colour for example it gets synced to the Creative Cloud because there is no way to tell it not to.

CS6 NEVER crashes or exhibits irritating behaviour anything like this.

I don't use CC2017 as in testing we have done it is too slow but also because of the huge number of reports of it's instability. We revisit it occasionally when we have time, but it's still not worth rolling it out to our studio Macs until it settles down.

[Laubender]

Hi,

thank you for your comments and open words.

Yes, there are principle flaws in a system that is postponing bug-fixing of new features to a new version and travel on.

With CC 2017 we never saw a bug fix version within the last 5 months. That's really, really bad.
And I stand to a comment I gave some days before in a different thread: Personally I would never do productive work on a new version that was never bug-fixed. One of my customers forced my to use CC 2017. All others are on older versions. CC 2017 is still in my personal testing phase.

What I like to see is a permanent bug fixing for all CC versions one can download and install with a CC subscription.

There is one good example with such a policy: it happend one time with a nasty bug affecting form fields, that still is present in CS6 and that was fixed in CC 9.3.0 and CC 2014.2 nearly at the same time. Well done Adobe, I thought back then. Obviously this policy—if it ever was one—changed. And changed for the worse.

And you are absolutely right—I think no-one can deny that—a lot of bugs were never fixed. And that a lot of features stalled in development and are left alone in their infancy.

I have a lot of customers on different systems with different versions of InDesign and I often have to deliver documents in various InDesign versions to them. Not only "end products" like PDFs for print service providers. Or I have to write scripts for them and testing should be done always on the customer's system and version of InDesign.

Sometimes we host legacy documents for years in older versions and we would be well advised to use older versions of InDesign to maintain old projects when they will be updated after months and years.

Currently I see one way out of that dilemma that older versions cannot be installed on newer OS systems:

Virtual machines running older OS versions. If I were in a situation like Sara, perhaps I would install a virtual machine on that new Mac with perhaps OSX 10.10.5 to be on the save side.

Regards,
Uwe