Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 – Gone forever?

Topic

[Kathy Stevens]

We installed Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 on one of our computers one year ago.

Now, on the one-year anniversary of the installation, Acrobat will not open and we get the message, “Adobe Licensing Agreement – Sign In Required – Please sign in with your Adobe ID”

Once signed in we get the additional request to, “Provide a serial number”.

We have legal copies of Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 installed on multiple workstations but cannot find a record of what serial number applies to the computer that is receiving the subject message and Acrobat will not open.

Any thoughts of how we can find the serial number in question or a workaround to get Acrobat working again?

• This topic was modified 6 months ago by Kathy Stevens.

Replies

Adobe’s instructions on how to find your serial number to activate, reinstall, or upgrade your product.

https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/find-serial-number.html

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Kathy Stevens

n0ads

We most likely purchased and downloaded the copy of Acrobat Standard in question from an online retailer.

However, we own multiple copies of the software and it is installed on multiple work stations so resolving the issue is complex.

We have the original “hard packaging” for some copies that include serial numbers – but I am not sure what workstations they are installed on – but it is probably not the PC in question based upon the email addresses tied to the accounts.

We have logged into our Newegg account – but did not find a record of an Adobe purchase.

We have email’s confirming orders from BestBuy for in-store pickups and I assume that they are for hard copies of the software that are installed on other computers. BestBuy does not have a record of an online purchase on their website.

And a search of our email inbox for the term Adobe does not result in any additional purchase information.

In short, we do not have a record of the serial number from a retailer, online retailer, or Amazom.

So where do we go from here?

Have you tried Belarc Advisor for the serial number ?

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Mr. Austin, Kathy Stevens

that’s a tough one, Kathy

also Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 goes EOL (or EOS as in “end of support”) in June 2025

I’m not sure if you want to continue using Adobe Acrobat 2020 when it goes out of support next year. maybe start thinking of looking for an alternative program for this.

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Kathy Stevens

EP

We will look for an alternative to Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 as it approaches its end of life.

For now, we have regained use of the app thanks to Alex5723 suggestion to use Belarc Advisor to recover the serial number.

I’d contact Adobe and inquire. When you installed the software, you likely had to provide a serial number at that time. They’ll have a record of that registration/activation.

 

Likewise, a third party [download] vendor will generate license keys via some interface provided by Adobe. They likely had to provide your company name when obtaining the keys. Adobe will have that.

Also keep in mind that the license agreement is ultimately what matters. Adobe may give you a single serial number that is authorized to be installed on 10,000 machines in your organization– so depending on your agreement  you may only have a handful of serial numbers for the entire organization. You can often push them remotely to registry keys/config files [eg. via GPO, etc.] to avoid users having to enter them on each workstation in the Enterprise.

 

[Note: I don’t currently own or manage any Adobe products so I can’t offer more specifics]

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Kathy Stevens

Alex5723

You were right on target.

• Opened Belarc Advisor,
• Scrolled down to Software Licenses,
• Found Adobe Systems – Adobe Acrobat 2020,
• Copied the Software License number,
• Entered the software license number into the Adobe popup, and
• Adobe Systems – Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 was updated and is now fully functional.

Thank You Alex!

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Mr. Austin, Alex5723

That’s GREAT that you were able to get the license number using BELARC Advisor! I’m sure that number is now safely squirreled away in the event of a similar situation in the future.

BUT, it sure would’ve been nice if Acrobat would have told you in plain sight before the download of the update began that you were going to need the license number associated with that software on that machine in order to successfully install the update.

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Cybertooth, Kathy Stevens

Based upon our license (renewal) experience with Adobe Systems’ Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020 we will:

• Open Belarc Advisor and copy into a Word document the license numbers for the applications on each of our computers,
• Save the license document into the Documents directory of each computer,
• Print out a hard copy of the Word document and put it away for safe keeping, and
• Begin a search for alternatives to Adobe software.