Adobe Acrobat Perpetual Licensing

[HCHTech]

I have a client that has about 8 separate perpetual licenses for Acrobat Standard. Some are 2017, some are 2020. All of the licenses are registered under a single Adobe account under the owner's name. Each licensed product is installed on a separate employee's computer. This isn't a new setup for them, obviously. Recently, they have begun having problems with user's signatures in the program not saving or not staying as default. Some users show multiple signatures available, some are correct and some just show the wrong one (one from another user).

I'm sure they used a single account to register the software for the same reason this is commonly done - so it doesn't have to be changed or tracked when someone leaves. However, after poking around with Adobe, it doesn't appear they really support a multi-user setup like this. For perpetual licenses, they expect every one to be registered with a different email address - it seems, anyway. There is a setting under Edit > Preferences > Adobe Online Services > Sync preferences across devices and document services. You can uncheck that, but it doesn't seem to affect the signature problem they are seeing. I'm guessing Adobe changed something on the back end that caused this behavior.

So, how to fix this - can we edit the licensing of existing keys somehow to reassign them to individual emails / Adobe accounts? I guess there is the Adobe "Teams" licensing, but no surprise, that costs more. I don't think my client is breaking any of Adobe's rules by licensing it the way they have been, and this might just be one of their "disincentivizations" for folks who are stubborn about moving to the more-profitable subscription model.

 

[HCHTech]

Well, trial and error, you don't need to purchase anything to create an Adobe account, so I'm going to just try making individual accounts for the employees and signing in their local installs to those accounts instead of the company owners. I'll bet that has a good chance of clearing this up.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Adobe changed how you "site license" a company....they call it "Teams" now.
You manage products across multiple users via Adobes Teams.

https://helpx.adobe.com/enterprise/admin-guide.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/enterprise/using/accounts.html

So you have a master login, and then you manage members of the team...and assign licenses based on that.
Pain in the butt...but it's how Adobe does things.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@YeOldeStonecat that only applies to the monthly per user licensing, as far as I know the perpetual stuff doesn't fit in there.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I look at it like Microsoft 365...software assurance....if you want 12x subscriptions of Adobe Acrobat Standard for 12 of your staff, this is their new way. I really hate reselling Adobe products, always left it with the end user to get it. But an accounting firm we took on last year, I had to figure out multiple users ...under a manageable subscription, and after dealing with overseas support (yuck)...this is what I was led to.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@YeOldeStonecat Correct, I'm just saying that this thread started with a huge investment in perpetual licenses, which Adobe really doesn't want to support anymore yet keeps selling. They all require an account to be linked to, and Adobe support ages ago told me to put them all on a single account. Which is how I use them to this day.

BUT... given the modern age of per user subscriptions, I can see how that probably becomes an issue if you're making use of the cloud features at all. Which forces companies to do exactly what you've described. And as resellers we can't really get involved because Adobe doesn't give us room to do so.

So I do my best to swap perpetual Adobe users over to PhandomPDF. After all, Adobe wants $20 / month / user for Acrobat. Microsoft basically charges that for all of the software you need to run a law firm int he cloud, in the most restrictive legal jurisdiction on the planet. The relative value gap is staggering.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yup, I'm not sure why Adobe is even still around...not sure how they still exist...

 

[HCHTech]

Well, so far so good on the separate accounts. The initial install has to be activated with the purchasing account, so you have to sign in once from the target workstation using the owner's account, then sign back out, create a new account for the employee and then sign in with that. Stupid dance, but that should keep the signatures separate - for now anyway.