Adobe Creative Cloud Activation/Deactivation Issues

Hi DMH79,

There is another option for the scenario you described called Deactivate All, this option only appears when attempting to install and use the products on a third computer when having already activated on two previously (and not deactivated them). This option deactivates all the computers or resets the activation process so you can activate on the third computer and on one of the prior two next time you go to use them.

Hope that helps,

-Dave

Hi DMH79,

Thank you for the additional insights about what happened. I know our developers are open suggestions for improvements. I'll see if I can find your interactions with our support department and pass the info and your suggestions here.

-Dave

It does all make sense and I appreciate you taking the time to pass the info along. Regarding the interactions, just cases or records of when you contacted our support.

i completely agree... this has caused issues for me as well. the current implementation of activation deactivation is a very good example of very bad ux. a few observations. first, under the current system, if i understand it correctly, i could install the cc software on 200 different machines and only activate it on 2 of them at any given time. the whole point of this overly cumbersome activation/deactivation process is to prevent the user from running the software simultaneously on more than 2 machines (or is it 1 machine?). regardless, it is more or less irrelevant whether the software is activated on 2 machines or 200 machines given that all adobe is concerned about is how many machines the user is running the software on at any given time. the problem with this protocol is spelled out clearly by dmh79 above. it is one thing to make software difficult to pirate or hack. but it is another to make it difficult for it's own customers to use! rather than lock legitimate, paying, licensed users out of their own software, the default behavior when the authentication process fails should be to grant the user a grace period. this would have allowed dmh79 to finish his project with his own adobe products and straighten out the activation issue at a later, more convenient, date. i hope adobe reworks this process.

Has anything come from this? It is extremely important that we can see which computers are activated and which aren't.

This is only true if all PC's are online at de-activation time. Otherwise there's no deactivation going on because the request is not being sent to the client from the servers. This is because the whole process relies on the CC to be online at all times & because the activation is done locally, on the actual PC and deactivation relies exactly on the client being online. If you got a laptop that's decomissioned and you acidentally didn't sign out, you have to go through support to do it for you.

Actually that's what I wish as well. Its intuitive, straightforward and gives the user the option of choosing what to activate and actually control the process.

This would be an amazing feature and would really bring the usability of CC up by about 1000%.  Between work, home, travel, I have about 6 computers with CC installed and have run into cases where Deactivate All doesn't release the licenses, and I can't remote in to a signed-in machine to change it.

Agree 100%

Regards,

Garrett Unglaub

Marketing

<contact info removed for privacy>

Our ski club is moving our website from FrontPage to Dreamweaver.  We purchased Dreamweaver and as I understand it we can have it active on two PCs at once.  We might want to have more backup machines available.  It would be nice to selectively deactivate a remote machine and temporarily activate the backup machine.  Is this going to be possible in the future?

Please take this request seriously Adobe.

Microsoft does this with Office 365… I’m sure Adobe could do it as well with Creative Cloud!

C'mon Adobe, if you're going to force everyone to use activation like that, at least listen to your customers and make it a painless procedure.

When I sign out of my laptop, I still can't activate on my home desktop as the activation limit has been reached.

People who use pirated software have less hassles than people who pay for genuine software. It is ridiculous.

I agree with what has been said above, and I myself have just run into the same problem, which led me to this forum.

It looks like this suggestion hasn't gained traction in the last year so as a community we should attempt to make this issue the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

There are monthly releases happening in CC now, so if there is a way to get this bumped up on the priority list we should attempt to do it. To this end i have referred to this thread in an online site survey, and tweeted this thread to @adobe and @adobecare and i encourage everyone reading this thread to do the same.

Adobe I love and use your software a lot, and for me I do not want to use an alternative, however i would really like to see this (what i see as a commodity in a cloud based environment) feature implemented.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers

Andy