Create packages using Creative Cloud Packager

Run Adobe Creative Cloud Packager.

• (Windows) Click the shortcut for the application in the Start menu, under Programs > Adobe > Creative Cloud Packager.
• (macOS) Use the alias at /Applications/Adobe/Creative Cloud Packager.

Select your account type. Account type is the type of license that you have for Creative Cloud membership and can be one of the following:

• Administrator for a Value Incentive Plan (VIP) customer for Creative Cloud for teams or education.
• Administrator for Enterprise Term License Agreement (ETLA), Education Enterprise Agreement (EEA), or a Government customer.

Sign in with your Adobe ID and password.

If you are a Creative Cloud for team member, use an Adobe ID that has been specified as an administrator for your team. If you are a Creative Cloud for enterprise customer, use a standard Adobe ID.

After you have successfully signed in, the Creative Cloud Packager screen appears.

If you want to set preferences for location of the cache for products, clear the cache, enable/disable auto-update of Creative Cloud Packager, or view Help on Creative Cloud Packager, click the Down Arrow next to the "Welcome, <user name>" message on the upper-right corner of the Creative Cloud Packager screen.

Click Preferences from the drop-down list to do one of the following:  

• Change the cache location where the applications are downloaded.
• Clear the cache.

Note: Clearing the cache deletes the downloaded applications. 

To save any changes you made in the Preferences screen, click Save. To exit without saving any changes, click Cancel.

On the Preferences screen, you can also enable or disable auto-update of Creative Cloud Packager.

• If you select Always Keep Creative Cloud Packager Up To Date, when Creative Cloud Packager is found not to be of the latest version available, Creative Cloud Packager is automatically updated to the latest version through the Internet.

In the Creative Cloud Packager screen, do one of the following:

• Click Create Package to start the package creation process.
  

• Click Create License Package. For more information, see Create license package.

In the Package Details screen that appears, enter the required details.

Enter the name of the package that you are creating.

Enter the location to which you want to save the package you create. You can click the Browse icon to locate the destination folder, or enter the absolute path.

If your admin account is linked to more than one organization, select the organization for which the package will be created.

In Windows, choose 32-bit or 64-bit processor support. It's necessary to make separate packages for 32-bit and 64-bit installations. A 32-bit package can't run on a64-bit machine. 

The options for license type depend on whether you are using a Creative Cloud for enterprise, Government, or Education account type or a Creative Cloud for teams account type.

Named Licensing allows users to sign in if they want to license the products they use. It enables members to access Creative Cloud services and gives administrators more visibility into activations. If no user has signed in to license a product, the usage is considered to be trial usage.

As an administrator, you can send your users an invitation to join the team. Once they receive the invitation, they can sign in and license the applications you have deployed to their systems. They can also access Creative Cloud services. The admin portal is updated to reflect the product activation status.

Creative Cloud for enterprise only. Use this option to create a package with a valid license. Use this workflow to deploy a product or group of products containing updates to client machines in a licensed state. No further validation is required on the client machine.

Creative Cloud for education only. Use this option to license the package to a machine rather than a user. Users never need to sign in or enter a serial number to license the software. Licenses are tied to machine deployment pools, which are created automatically when you order products.

If you're an education customer, to add Device Seats you must place an order with your reseller. Adobe then creates a Deployment Pool for the products ordered. For example, if you purchase 100 Creative Cloud All Apps seats and 50 Photoshop Single App seats, two deployment pools are created. After deployment pools have been created, Creative Cloud Packager shows you Device License option under the License Type options. On selecting this option, you can view and select a deployment pool to use for the package. After installation, the package attempts to activate. If activation is not possible at deployment time either due to no Internet connectivity or proxy configuration, then the package continues to run and attempt silent activation for seven days before it ceases to function.

If you want to know how many machines your package has been deployed to, you can open up Creative Cloud Packager and check the Deployed To field.

For more information, see Create packages with device licenses.

Creative Cloud desktop app is the central hub for Creative Cloud activity and allows the users to view applications and updates. For named license, Creative Cloud desktop app is always enabled.

To create a package that contains only the Creative Cloud desktop app, do not select any applications or updates in the subsequent screens.

This option is applicable only when Creative Cloud desktop app is enabled. When disabled, the end users don't see the apps panel.

This option allows users to manage applications and updates even when they do not have Administrator privileges. To allow your users without Administrator credentials to manage applications and updates, select this option.

Once you have deployed a package with elevated privileges, to revoke the elevated privileges later, create a Creative Cloud desktop app-only package with Elevated Privileges deselected and deploy it. Similarly, to grant elevated privileges to existing users, you need to create a Creative Cloud desktop app only package with Elevated Privileges selected and deploy it.

The Elevated Privileges option is available only when you have selected Show Applications And Updates Via The Apps Panel.

The settings for package configuration include options such as whether to ignore conflicting processes during installation.

To review or change the package configuration settings, click Change.

The Advanced Configurations screen appears.

In an individual product installation, the Adobe Application Manager launches automatically every day at 2:00 am to check for updates to Adobe products. The user is not aware of this check unless a product update is found, when the application displays a dialog on the end-user machine to inform the user that an update is available.

To prevent the user’s Application Manager from doing automatic update checking for the deployed products, choose the default option, "Adobe Update Manager is disabled (IT manages update distribution)”. In addition to suppressing the automatic update behavior, it disables the Update option from the Help menu in the applications; users can no longer actively look for updates on their own. If you choose this option, the IT admin must download and deploy updates for their users.

The option “Admin users update via Adobe Update Manager” enables automatic update checking through the Adobe Application Manager, which is the default for products installed individually. If the user’s system was previously set to suppress updates, deploying a package with this option set re-enables automatic update checking.

You can choose to redirect the automatic update process to check for updates with your own update server, rather than the Adobe update server. Select the option “Use internal update server”. For this option, it's necessary to host updates on an internal server, and redirect the Adobe Application Manager to look there for updates. You do this by providing the path to an XML configuration file that contains information about the hosted server. For more information about hosting an internal server, see Using Adobe Update Server Setup Tool.

Adobe Remote Update Manager lets you remotely run the updater on the client with the benefit of executing as an administrator. To enable the use of Remote Update Manager, select this option. For more information, see Remote Update Manager. 

The Application Manager offers you the following choices for the deployment location:

• Deploy to default application directory: The default drive is the system drive; the default path is \Program Files in Windows and /Applications in macOS.
• Specify directory during deployment: Allows the end users to specify the installation path during the deployment of the package. On macOS  users are prompted on the user interface, while on Windows it is a command-line option only.
• Specify directory: Enter the path to the location to a specific installation location

Adobe Remote Update Manager lets you remotely run the updater on the client with the benefit of executing as an administrator. Select this option to enable the use of Remote Update Manager. For more information, see Remote Update Manager. 

To save any changes to configuration you made and return to the Package Details screen, click Save. To return to the Package Details screen without making any changes, click Cancel.

In the Package Details screen, click Next. If you selected the Enterprise, Government, or Education user account type in the Sign In Screen, and are using a Serial Number License you are prompted to enter the enterprise license key. If you do not have your enterprise license key, you can find it at licensing.adobe.com. Enter the key and then click Next.

The Application and Updates screen appears.

Select the products and updates that you want to include in the package. For example, you can choose to include the Adobe Photoshop software and all it updates, and (only) the updates for Adobe InDesign. Select the checkboxes appropriately.

Core Components is always selected, and you cannot deselect it. This option deploys the common licensing infrastructure to client machines. To create a package that only contains the Creative Cloud for desktop app, enable Adobe Creative Cloud from the Package's Advanced Configurations screen. 

You can package archived versions of software as well. Select the Show archived versions check box to display the list of supported previous versions, if any. If the product or update that you selected has already been downloaded to your machine, a Down Arrow appears next to its name.

You can also select the language you want to package in, using the drop-down list on the upper-right side.

When you package an update for the latest version of some of the applications, you can apply the package to a system that does not already have the base version of the application installed. You can identify such apps with the icon ().  For a list of such applications, see Applications that can be deployed without their base versions.

For example, the update of Photoshop CC 2015.0.1 could be installed on a client machine that already had base version of Photoshop CC 2015 installed. The latest version of Photoshop update can be installed on a machine that may not have the Photoshop base version. So while creating a package, you can choose to package only the update version for the apps that can be deployed without their base versions.

To add applications and updates from a local source, such as a DVD or ESD, instead of downloading from the Creative Cloud, click Add Offline Media.

Browse to the location where the offline media is located. On a Mac, place the DMG file in a directory and browse to that directory. Select the products and updates to package.

When you have made your selection, click Done to return to the Application and Updates screen.

Click Build to start packaging the selected applications and updates.

The Adobe Creative Cloud Packager downloads the products and updates that have not been downloaded already to your machine. It then builds the package. The progress is displayed on the Download Progress and the Build Progress screens.

When the build completes successfully, the Summary page appears.

This page displays a summary of the products or components included in the build. The name of the folder in which the package is created is displayed on the screen. Clicking the folder name opens the folder.

You can click the Build Log link to see the detailed progress report, including any errors.

Note: When you create a package, Adobe Creative Cloud Packager creates a configuration file for the package, with the name <package_name>.ccp. This file is located in the folder that you specify for the package. This configuration file is for internal use only - do not modify or delete this file.

To create another package, click Main Menu to go back to the Welcome screen. To exit Adobe Creative Cloud Packager, click Close.

The Build folder contains the MSI (Windows) or the PKG (macOS) files.

The Build folder also contains the following files:

For details, see handling Conflicting processes in this article.

Contains the list of products and updates that you have included in the package

The Exceptions folder contains the payloads that must be installed separately.