Purchased Creative Cloud apps appear as trial versions

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Learn how to stop error messages indicating that you’re still in trial mode (or that your trial has expired) even though you’ve already purchased a Creative Cloud subscription.

Note:

It can take up to one hour for your purchase to process. Until it is processed, the apps continue to show the options for a free membership. You may need to wait a little longer if you completed your purchase within the past hour.

Try the following solutions in the specified order until the issue is fixed. If you are a teams or enterprise user, see resolve trial and license expired errors for teams & enterprise users.

  1. Sign in at https://account.adobe.com/plans.

    Note:

    If you have more than one Adobe account, check that you're signed in to each account with the correct email address.

  2. If your plan has expired or if your account has a payment issue, you will see an error message. To fix the payment issue, select Edit billing and payment.

    Edit billing and payment details
    You can also manage your subscription and view the apps included in your plan in this window.

  3. If your payment method isn’t current, update your credit card information and select Save.

    Your new payment method will take effect in the next billing cycle.

  1. Open the Creative Cloud desktop app.

  2. Select the Account icon in the upper right and then select Sign out.

    The Account menu showing options such as Preferences, Sign out, and monthly generative credits for Gen AI features.
    Selecting Sign out logs you out of all Creative Cloud apps.

  3. In the confirmation dialog box, select Continue. The Creative Cloud apps and services associated with your account are deactivated on the computer.

  4. Sign in again to your Adobe account.

  5. Open any Creative Cloud app included in your membership, such as Photoshop or Illustrator. Sign in, if prompted.

  1. Open the Creative Cloud desktop app.

  2. Under Installed apps in the Apps tab, select the More actions   icon. Then select Check for updates.

    The expanded menu showing options to Manage autro-updates, Check for updates, and Update all apps.
    You can also turn on auto-update for your Creative Cloud apps.

  3. If you aren’t using the latest version of your Creative Cloud app, you see an update prompt next to its name. Select Update.

If the previous solutions don't work, your computer could have trouble connecting to Adobe's activation servers. This could be because of an incorrectly configured operating system hosts file (operating system hosts files map host names to IP addresses). 

To solve this issue, try removing Adobe-related entries from the hosts file. You can remove the Adobe-related entries from the hosts file in two ways:

Automatically repair the hosts file using the Limited Access Repair tool: Repair the hosts file using the Limited Access Repair tool. With this method, you don't have to manually edit the hosts file -- the tool automatically repairs the file. 

Reset the hosts file manually: If the issue isn't fixed even after you run the Limited Access Repair tool, reset the hosts file manually.

Still having problems?

If the solutions don't work, check and resolve connection errors.

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