Adobe Acrobat 2017 installation and activation madness

[StashT]

Has anyone had any luck installing Adobe Acrobat 2017 with just a license key and not having to activate with an Adobe ID?

I purchased the software for one of my users under my Adobe account.  Figured I got a license key, I would just enter the key and activate it.

But nooooo, Adobe kept asking for an Adobe ID sign-in and even if I entered mine I was told that I reached the max activations for the software (what?)

So I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Adobe support getting more and more enraged each time they would say, ok, now sign in with your Adobe ID.  I don't want to sign in, I just want to activate the software I purchased with a license key!

Finally after much frustration, support via remote session did something where they got it activated without signing in.

Two weeks later this user has come back to me saying Acrobat is asking him to sign in to activate the software and his trial is almost over.

At this point I am just about done with Adobe and will look for other, cheaper but easier to maintain solutions for PDF editing like Wondershare's PDFelement 6 Professional.  I am dreading calling support and going through this whole song and dance again.

Why is it so freakin' hard to install and activate a single, stand-alone instance of Acrobat Pro/2017/etc.?

[Adorobat]

Hi StashT,

As per the issue description mentioned above, you want to install Acrobat 2017 without activating the application with an Adobe ID, is that correct?

Please refer to the following forum threads discussing the similar topic:

Acrobat DC 2017 "Sign in required"

How to Remove the "Sign In Required" that launches after install?

Thank You,

Shivam

[henryl8482203]

Activation is sign-in. The product is only activated if you are signed in to your Adobe account. This is not like the activation with Microsoft Office standalone. You don't need to login to a web-based account to use Office once you have activated it. With Adobe product you do. You supposedly bought a "standlone" version in theory but in reality you simply rent the product.