Suddenly unlicensed Adobe InDesign when in in foreign country for a longer stay

[Jehrichow]

Hello!
I am German and frequently travelling with my Computer to Spain. This year I am here for +60 days.
All of a sudden my CS6 does not work.
Yes, I know it is an old version... but I was working with it for the last 9 years. No issues ever!
 
I have been to Spain about four weeks ago - for then already 30 days.
Suddendly I had this massage comming up: I could not work with Indesign anymore.

Then I went to Germany, deinstallend InDesign - took the license out of the creative cloud. Then installed Indesign newly, added the licenses - and could work without any issues...
 
I did not have this issue during the last nine years... even when I was travelling. But I did never travel more than 30 days...
 
Now I am back to Spain. I opened Indesign - and the whole trouble occored again. It seems I am not able to use InDesign in Spain - though I have got a valid license. I checked the license with the Adobe support - all correct. The support told me he can not see any problems with my account, but I should post my issues here...

What can I do? Anyone else with the same problem?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The evidence and reports seem to be that CS6 has been finally end-of-life'd by Adobe. There have been a number of posts like yours where users are unable to reactivate their installations despite having done so in the past. I believe Adobe finally closed the activation server.

[Peter Spier · Accepted solution]

Activation servers have not been shut down, but the number of activations can no longer be increased so it is important to deactivate exisiting installs BEFORE installing again.

That said, there are a lot of people who, knowingly or not, bought unauthorized licenses, typically at deep discount on the web, and Adobe will no longer allow those license numbers to be used. See https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/invalid-revoked-serial-numbers.html and https://community.adobe.com/t5/download-install-discussions/activation-limit-reached-for-non-subscri...

[Peter Spier]

If you believe your license was revoked in error you should go to the first link above about revoked serial numbers and click the chat icon. This is supposed to connect you to a team that can resolve the issue if the license was revoked in error.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Thanks for the clarification, Peter. I was going on bits and pieces picked up from prior dicussions that didn't quite add up to the correct answer.

[Peter Spier]

there was so much partial or inaccurate info floating around I figured we needed some "official" input and @Jeffrey_A_Wright was kind enough to provide it.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Peter Spier

But what with OP's case? Spain and Germany are in the EU? 

Or is it because Germany has a different EULA?

[Peter Spier]

Don't know whether Sapin and Germany have diffent regional license coverage, but I believe that error message in the screen shot is indicative that either his serial number has been voided for fraud or that it out of region.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Honestly, I think Adobe should reactivate any CS6 license that isn't a generated or fradulent one, with loosened checking of multi-installations and the like. As the last wholly standalone/non subscription version, it's only used by that spectrum of users who need/like it and presumably paid for it back in trhe day, and won't upgrade to CC or subscription payments because of cost. The only sales Adobe might lose is whatever small percentage of that population that would upgrade to CC (either the ID-only license or the whole set) if forced to; the rest would probably move to Affinity or just stop dinking around with a format program. And it would continue to build user share and tendency to move up to the current versions, if only on a small scale.

Support would, of course, have to be ended. That would be another pressure point for users to move up or move on without being honked off at these (otherwise reasonable) activation refusals.

[Peter Spier]

My understanding is that is exactly what they are doing, except for possibly not being able to activate a new install if the user was unable to de-activate the previous installation.

[Jehrichow]

I am going to work via teamviewer on the computer left home in Germany via different computer.

Yesterday I installed CS6 again - it works without any problems - in Germany.

In my case I need CS6 about 3 hours per month - upgrading it not necessary or economically worth.

[Jehrichow]

Thanks Peter for your answer.

But how can this issue happen after using CS6 for 10 years without any problems so far?

The only thing I changed was me travelling to Spain. I bought the license second hand from an agency that changed their business and let the license transfer via Adobe... the number is valid... even the German telephone helpline said that after checking.

[Peter Spier]

Obviously nobody here can tell you exactly waht has happened, but this really sounds like you've been caught up in a crackdown on vlume licenses being parceled out to individual users. A "valid" serial number doesn't necessarily mean the license is being used according to the terms of use for that license.

If you have proof of a transfer of license through Adobe I suggest you go to https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/invalid-revoked-serial-numbers.html and click on the chat button and see what the tram that's supposed to be able to resolve thes issues can do.

[Robert at ID-Tasker · Accepted solution]

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/indesign-cs6-no-longer-works/m-p/14839960

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/adobe-cs6-perpetual-licensing-issue/m-p/14827060

[Jehrichow]

Thank you - sounds absolutely clear to me...

[Dirk Becker]

While CS6 had its own license mechanism for permanent licenses (also used for packages such as "master suite"), InDesign CS6 was later also included in the CC license.

I remember having activation trouble when CC was forthcoming – not sure for which of them. This resulted in a lengthy phone call where the permanent license was discarded and we used the CC license instead, including a different installer.

As you mention "took the license out of the creative cloud" this could be a different problem than that of permanent licenses. E.g. maybe the CC license scheme with monthly calling home does not support that old installation any more? Pure speculation.

[Dirk Becker]

Another possible problem comes to mind - do you use your mobile phone for internet access? Maybe the local provider does not assign IPv4 numbers any more, or blocks specific port numbers, or has a weird DNS server, proxy where they don't belong.

Retry with different internet access, maybe a VPN can help.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

VPN set to some place in Germany would be the best solution. 

[Jehrichow]

I tried that with a vpn in Germany - still the same issiu.

[Laubender]

@Dirk Becker said: "While CS6 had its own license mechanism for permanent licenses (also used for packages such as "master suite"), InDesign CS6 was later also included in the CC license …"

Hi Dirk,

exactly. FWIW: When you had InDesign CS6 version 8 already installed as perpetual version and you did a trial of Creative Cloud to test InDesign version 9, the serial number of your already installed CS6 did change!

You ran into trouble with 3rd-party plug-ins that were tied to (parts of) the serial number of your perpetual version. Later, when you uninstalled Creative Cloud after the trial version the old serial number was not assigned back to the perpetual version of InDesign CS6. You had to uninstall and reinstall CS6 perpetual version from your old (disk based) installer.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )