Which Adobe ID is a specific file licensed to?

[Daniel333]

Hello,

in 2010 I bough an ebook - PDF with Adobe Digital Rights Management (DRM). I could open it then - probably in Adobe Digital Editions.

Later, I registered for (another) Adobe ID - as I had forgotten about the earlier one. Of course: I cannot open the ebook with this ID.

Problem: I cannot remember the Adobe ID I used back then and therefore I do not know to which ID the file is licensed to. I had a suggestion - but Adobe support told me that under the email adress I proposed no Adobe ID can be found.

How can I find out which ID the file is licensed to?

Thanks for help!

[sjpt]

You can find out the internal ID for a DRM .epub file, and I suspect it is the same for a DRM .pdf file.

The internal ID is the one that is a really fixed id for an account, even as you change associated email or password.

However, I'm not sure whether Adobe can help you get back to the account given that internal id.

To find the internal AdobeID.

1. open the DRM .epub (or .pdf?) file as a .zip file.
   With some zip programs, you can just open the .epub as an archive (eg, with 7zip),
   with others you will have to rename the .epub/.pdf file to a .zip file first, then open it.
2. find the file 'rights.xml' within the zip.  Probably  'META-INF\rights.xml'
3. open the rights.xml file
4. inside you will find a section '<user>' that looks something like
   <user>urn:uuid:ff2ddc22-eca0-46c6-a84d-xxxxxxxxxxxx</user>
5. That string is the internal version for your AdobeID.

That stays fixed for the AdobeID, even if you change the associated email (or password),

that internal ID is what is really associated with the book.

(n.b. there is no point in trying to change the urn to a current one you might find and recreating the .epub file; the DRM is cleverer than that).

You can now contact Adobe at Adobe Live Chat: http://www.adobe.com/support/chat/ivrchat.html

It may be that if you can give them that internal ID they will be able to get you access to your account again.

If they say they can't, it might be worth trying two or three times at intervals;

it seems from what others have said that some of the representatives are very clued up, but others are not.

(I've never used the Live Chat).

If you do go through all that, let us know how you got on.

[Daniel333]

Thank you for your response.

I opened the PDF with 7zip and could identify a code starting with

ADEPT_ID(urn:uuid:d7a95.....

I used this to contact the chat support.

Unfortunately, the chat support was not able to pull any information based on that ID.

However, I was able to re-download the file from the vendor from which I have bought the book. So, the file is closed for me - even if I am disappointed that Adobe could not help me - even after almost one hour of chatting.

Thanks again for your help!