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Recover shared device licenses

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When you deploy shared device licenses, you consume the licenses that your organization has purchased in the agreement with Adobe.

As you deploy these licenses, the count of consumed licenses is indicated on the product card on the Products tab of the Admin Console.

Now, say that you want to recover licenses that you deployed on some machines. For example, if a machine is inoperable, you plan to retire an old machine, or you want to repurpose a machine and reuse it outside of a lab or a classroom.

License count

To recover a license from an inoperable machine, you'll need to reset the licenses of all machines of that product profile.

However, to recover the license from machine to which you have access, you can deactivate the license on that machine itself.

Reset licenses mapped to a product profile

Caution:

The following procedure resets the licenses of all machines in a product profile. Adobe recommends that you save any unsaved work on all machines in this profile. Also, if any long running processes are running on any of the machines in this profile, ensure that you either stop these processes or let them complete before proceeding.

If you need to recover a license from an inoperable machine, use the following procedure to reset the licenses of all machines of that product profile:

  1. On the Admin Console, go to the Products tab.
  2. Click the product profile for which you need to recover licenses.
  3. Click  in the upper-right corner of the Product Profile page and choose Recover Licenses.
  4. To confirm, click Recover.
Confirm recover licenses

Even if you only planned to recover licenses on some of the machines of this profile, all machines mapped to this profile are now reset. However, when users sign into Adobe's app on each of these machines, the machines are immediately licensed again.

For example, say a product profile is mapped to ten machines and you want to retire two of these machines, use the procedure above to recover the licenses from all the ten machines. When users sign into Adobe apps on the other eight machines, these will be immediately licensed again. Now you have two licenses that you can use on another two machines.

Deactivate licenses

If you need to recover licenses from machines to which you have access, you can deactivate the licenses on those machines using the Shared Device Licensing toolkit.

A machine can be activated with a single shared device license. Also, you may install multiple shared device licenses on a single machine. You can choose to deactivate all the licenses on a machine or only deactivate a single license on that machine.

Download and run licensing toolkit

The procedures described in this document require you to execute commands using the Shared Device Licensing toolkit.

First, you'll need to download the Adobe Licensing Toolkit from the following location based on the client machine OS:

  • macOS: Download the adobe-licensing-toolkit.dmg and mount the file.
  • Windows: Download the zip file and extract the adobe-licensing-toolkit.exe.

How to use the toolkit

Since the toolkit is a command-line utility, you'll need to use the Windows command prompt or the macOS terminal to use it.

If you're unsure of how to execute commands from the Windows command prompt or the macOS terminal, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Windows command prompt.

    Press the Start button on your keyboard, type Command prompt and press Enter.

  2. From Windows Explorer, drag-and-drop the adobe-licensing-toolkit.exe file (downloaded above) to the Windows command prompt.

Notice that the command prompt now displays the toolkit filename. (It may also display the full folder path of the file).

Using the Shared Device Licensing toolkit on Windows

The commands described below require you to enter arguments to the toolkit.

For example, to deactivate shared device licenses, after you drag-and-drop the file on the prompt, type --deactivate (give a space between the filename and --deactivate) and press Enter.:

  1. Open the macOS terminal.

  2. From the macOS Finder, drag-and-drop the adobe-licensing-toolkit file (from location to which you mounted the file above) to the macOS terminal.

Notice that the command prompt now displays the toolkit filename. (It may also display the full folder path of the file).

Using the Shared Device Licensing toolkit on macOS

The commands described below require you to enter arguments to the toolkit.

For example, to deactivate shared device licenses, after you drag-and-drop the file on the prompt, type --deactivate (give a space between the filename and --deactivate) and press Enter.:

Deactivate all licenses

On a single shared device, you may have activated multiple licenses. For example, the same device may require different app installations for different groups of students. So, to deactivate all licenses on a device, run the following command with admin privileges:

Windows

adobe-licensing-toolkit.exe --deactivate

Short form:

adobe-licensing-toolkit.exe -t

macOS

sudo ./adobe-licensing-toolkit --deactivate

Short form:

sudo ./adobe-licensing-toolkit -t

For help on how to run the above commands, see How to use the toolkit.

Deactivate single license

You can also choose to deactivate only specific licenses on a machine. To do this, you will need the NpdId, a unique identifier of the license that you want to remove.

Get license NpdId

To get NpdId for the shared device license packages on a device, run the following command with admin privileges:

Windows

adobe-licensing-toolkit.exe --licenseInformation

Short form:

adobe-licensing-toolkit.exe -l

macOS

sudo ./adobe-licensing-toolkit --licenseInformation

Short form:

sudo ./adobe-licensing-toolkit -l

For help on how to run the above commands, see How to use the toolkit.

When you run the above command, you will see the following (sample) output:

Adobe Licensing Toolkit (0.1.5.57) 
License Details 
  
NpdId          : MWVjZGNlMzMtZGU2Yi00ZmNlLTkzZTktY2MxMjBhZmFiZjg1 
AppId          : Photoshop1 
DeploymentMode : NAMED_USER_EDUCATION_LAB 
CacheExpiry    : 03/06/19 20:01:56 India Standard Time 
LicenseId      : 511F26523959D15EBD9B 
LicenseExpiry  : 03/06/21 20:01:56 India Standard Time 
  
NpdId          : YjZiOGU0ZTItYTkxNy00NTFlLWFkOTItZTljNTc2M2U2OTgx 
AppId          : Animate1 
DeploymentMode : NAMED_USER_EDUCATION_LAB 
CacheExpiry    : 03/06/19 20:01:56 India Standard Time 
LicenseId      : 511F26523959D15EBD9B 
LicenseExpiry  : 03/06/21 20:01:56 India Standard Time 
Operation Successfully Completed

From the output (see above sample), you need the NpdId for the shared device license that you want to deactivate.

Deactivate specific licenses

Now use the NPIDs from the previous command, to deactivate the required license:

Windows

adobe-licensing-toolkit.exe --deactivate --npdId <NpdId from -licenseInformation command above>

Short form:

adobe-licensing-toolkit.exe -t -n <NpdId from -licenseInformation command above>

macOS

sudo ./adobe-licensing-toolkit --deactivate --npdId <NpdId from -licenseInformation command above>

Short form:

sudo ./adobe-licensing-toolkit -t -n <NpdId from -licenseInformation command above>

For help on how to run the above commands, see How to use the toolkit.

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