Comments on: Help! I’ve Lost My Serial Number.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:04:01 +0000

Thank you for the help!

By: Roland

Roland — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 08:24:31 +0000

I had the problem of not having my CS3 serial handy when I wanted to install the Fireworks CS4 Beta at home, and was sure the serial shown in Illustrator and Photoshop’s System Info dialog was correct.
When I got onto Adobe’s live help chat thingamajig the person I got ‘help’ from didn’t tell me it wasn’t the complete serial but did know it wasn’t valid (duh!) so I still had to drive to work to pick up the serial.
I thought about deactivating and re-activating, but decided not to as I didn’t need the serial right away.

Saving the serials in one location is a good idea. I think I’ll use Google Docs for that as then it’s available everywhere I need it, in case I need the info at home while the software’s at work or vice versa. It’d also help save the info on whose name it’s registered to (I tend to register or order on multiple addresses).

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:12:01 +0000

I tend to list the software name, version and serial number in my address book. Always accessible, like a phone number as well as being synced and backed up regularly.

By: Bob Smallman

Bob Smallman — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:03:11 +0000

Years ago I created a simple little FileMaker database with three fields — Software Name and Serial Number and Date. I enter every new application I install, and it has saved my life many times as I have moved to new computers. And, of course, there are lots of inexpensive programs that do the same thing.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:54:12 +0000

Steve, for the multiple licenses you can retrieve a partial serial to determine which license is used on which workstation if you have the Suite. This trick doesn’t work for stand alone InDesign
1) Launch Illustrator or Photoshop CS3 application.
2) Go to Help > System Info
3) Scroll down to Serial Number, it will be after the OS and User Name entries.
4) This line has the first 20 digits of the serial used to install the suite.

By: Peter Spier

Peter Spier — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:40:34 +0000

I’m flattered.

And as far as using up the activations, I’ve done that, once, or something similar with a hard drive crash, and I called the phone number that’s also available in the dialog. The person on the other end was very nice, asked why I needed to reset the activations, and got me back in business in about three minutes. Honest folks have nothing to fear from activation.

By: Steve Werner

Steve Werner — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:28:25 +0000

Bob is absolutely right that you should register your product with Adobe. You can go to the Adobe website to see your registration number.

The problem is if you have MULTIPLE licenses. It doesn’t tell you which serial number is installed on which computer. (Of course, the highly organized will keep a list matching serial numbers and workstations, but most of us….)

That’s where Peter’s excellent tip comes in handy!