If you are like me and work in a fairly secure office where all Internet access is routed through an authenticate proxy server (you have to use an ID and password to get to the Internet) you might have noticed that installing CS6 products can be difficult.

The installer told me to go to http://www.adobe.com/go/getactivated for an offline activation.

It is not practical to "Disable the firewall" or"Disable the proxy" as most of us worker bees have neither the authority or ability to do such a thing.

So back to that last bit: "Disable the proxy server." Well I could not do that, but I could disable my PC's ability to connect to the proxy and therefore make it seem like I had no Internet whatsoever. And lo and behold all the right prompts appeared and offline activation sailed along smoothly!

This is a little long, but I wanted to include lots of screen shots so you'll know what to expect.

Here's how I did it:

1. Right-click the Internet Explorer Icon on your desktop (or select Tools > Internet Options in IE)

2. Click Properties.

3. Select the Connections card.

4. Click LAN Settings.

5. Uncheck any boxes (you might want to write down what was in the boxes or grab a screen shot as you'll have to put this back to how you found it later to restore your Internet access). Click OK and OK again. You've now shut off IE's ability to hit your proxy server and therefore the Internet.

6. Click Install I have a serial number

7. Accept the license agreement.

8. Enter your license key.

9. Click Next. At this point the installer will attempt to validate your license, but since you haven't got Internet access, it will give you an error. This is where the process broke down on me, when the installer could detect the Internet but not navigate my proxy.

10. But, now beacuse you do not have Internet Access, you'll get this error. Click Connect Later.

11. Select your customizations (if any) and click Install.

12. When installation is complete, click Launch Now.

13. You'll get an error since you don't have Internet, click "Having Trouble Connecting to the internet?"

14. Click Offline Activation.

15. Click Generate Request Code.

16. Go to http://www.adobe.com/go/getactivated, sign in, put in your request code and serial number and generate the response code.*

17. Enter the response code.

18. Click Activate.

19. Click Launch when you get the Offline Activation Complete dialog.

* if you are installing more than one product, generate the response codes for each at the same time. I ran into an issue where once I created a response code, no other response codes I created for subsequent installs were accepted. I had to wait 24 hours for a newly generated code to work.

You are done! Enjoy your software!

Cheers!

-Greg