I deal with a lot of Adobe offline clients and there always seems to be a challenge to reactivate a licence that has expired.
In this article I am going to show how to deploy an Adobe offline build using the Adobe licensing Toolkit and the adobe console to build the package to then download and deploy. Adobe call it Isolated activation packages.
This walk through will be for both Windows (Yuck) and Mac bases OS.
Tools your going to need
- Adobe Offline Licence from a reseller or direct from Adobe
- Adobe login details to the Admin Console
- Adobe Licensing Toolkit (Downloaded from the Adobe Console portal)
- Fast internet
- Remote Software (I am using Apple Remote software tool and Splashtop for Windows)
- Admin access to the machine that Adobe Cloud is going to be deployed to
Before you start the process I would recommend you look at the machine your going to deploy to and check there is enough space to download the package i.e 20GB if its the full package.
Login to the Adobe Console
https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/business/teams/for-admins.html
Inside the portal go to packages and click create package
The first option is you can build a online package for named users who the admin account can create or remove much like any Creative Cloud portal or the Features restricted licensing which is the offline version so no internet needed to open Creative Cloud.
On the next page it gives you the online CC version or the offline version which is marked as Isolated. This is the one we are looking at.
You will need to now go to the remote machine and run the Adobe Licensing Toolkit to get the code which you will need to cut and past into the activation code. Without this you can download Adobe packages build to your hearts content but it wont license without that magic code.
On the machine that needs the Adobe products you need to download the Adobe Licensing Toolkit and run it in terminal. To generate the code it’s as simple as open the dmg file and run the file to get the code. Its case sensitive so in the screenshot you can see my mistake a Capital C was used in the command. I also types sudo first then dragged the file path to terminal giving me the full link to the file and added to the end the -c (Lower case) which generated the code for me.
sudo ./adobe-licensing-toolkit --generateChallengeKey
Short form:
sudo ./adobe-licensing-toolkit -c
Once done its copy and paste it in the activation code line and carry on with the wizard to build the package. You can add all the machines at the same time just click the add another code for more than one machine. You could even uploaded a cvs file however for me it was just easy to add them individually, your choice.
The next page You have to choose the platform i.e intel MacOS etc and your language so for the UK I have selected international. You can select your own language method and Operating System. Note on the Platform method Silicon Macs have their own build so make sure you select the correct build method otherwise you could end up downloading the internet and find the installer fails.
We now get to build the package for this demo I am just using a few of the apps i.e Photoshop, Lightroom to show the demo of creating the build. The next few pages ask for plugins there are loads other choose from if you require them and it also asks if you require any management tool like extensions or custom directories.
After the options you just need to name the package builder and Adobe will create the installer for you to download.
Once built you have a very short window to download the installer and run the installer (3 days I think) then it wont work. The installer is built for that machine so don’t get excited thinking you can install it on another computer.
This is the final screen you get with the package that has been downloaded from the adobe website. The installer (download to the downloads folder) is now good to double click and install. Once installed I would check the apps work so open a few of them just to make sure then as always with these things do a reboot and you should be good to go for the next year. I have found the Creative cloud seems to give a grace period of around 30 days if you forget to renew your product license with your reseller. the email address paired to the Creative cloud console does get the reminder so keen an eye on it. Last thing you want is to have to go through the whole process again because someone forgot to renew the software.
Here are some help files from Adobe that are worth link my article to bookmark. I have found Adobe support a bit vague in how you do the offline version. You could end up like Alice jumping down the rabbit whole trying to fine the solution. There is the 24/7 support channel if you do get stuck but don’t count on them action the request quickly. The 2 links I give you here are what I have always reverted back to.