Can't install Adobe Acrobat on High Sierra.

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Level 2

191 points

Can't install Adobe Acrobat on High Sierra.

I have been using Adobe CC for years. Now, for reasons unknown, I am prevented from installing Acrobat one more time, supposedly by some lines of code in the High Sierra OS. This is according to a tech at Adobe. I don't know code, so where exactly this is happening I don't know, but I have pages of that code including the two lines responsible. This sounds a bit questionable, but the tech was unable to install the app on my computer remotely. All the others, Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, etc., all work fine. Any ideas? Re-install High Sierra? Need to see the code?

Mac Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6), Mac Pro 5,1 mid-2010

Posted on Oct 29, 2018 12:54 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,212 points

Oct 29, 2018 1:11 PM in response to Birck Cox

The Adobe rep is either lacking information about their own product, or they were just trying to get off the call. There is no such code in High Sierra that prevents you from installing Acrobat. I've got the CC version on both my High Sierra and Mojave partitions.

What may be stopping its installation is the Creative Cloud app itself. You can boot to any drive with an OS on it, login to your CC subscription and install every app listed on every bootable drive - except Acrobat.

What it's doing is it sees Acrobat DC Pro is already installed on another drive/partition and considers it done and won't show an Install button. The solution is to dismount any drive that already has Acrobat on it. Quit the Creative Cloud control center and relaunch it. Then you'll be able to install Acrobat on the drive you're currently booted to.

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Answer 2

Birck Cox Author

Level 2

191 points

Oct 29, 2018 1:44 PM in response to Birck Cox

You were right. I de-mounted the backup drives, went back to the original CC Install screen, which was still up, and hit "Try again". This time it worked. Odd that a techie wouldn't have thought of that. At any rate, thank you very much for the elegant solution. I was not looking forward to mucking about in the OS code.

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Answer 3

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,212 points

Oct 29, 2018 1:57 PM in response to Birck Cox

Took me a few tries to figure that one out, too. As long as the CC installer can see any copy of Acrobat DC Pro, it will pretend it's already installed, even though it's not on the drive you're booted to and are trying to get it on.

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Answer 4

Birck Cox Author

Level 2

191 points

Oct 29, 2018 1:30 PM in response to Kurt Lang

That sounds correct, but at the moment, I only have one drive installed in the Mac Pro, EXCEPT for the copies on my backup drives. I haven't checked them, but could they be preventing installation?

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

239,303 points

Oct 29, 2018 1:48 PM in response to Birck Cox

Kurt is absolutely great! 🙂

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Can't install Adobe Acrobat on High Sierra.

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