Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning we get a small commission if you make a purchase through our links, at no cost to you. For more information, please visit our Disclaimer Page.
Over the years, Adobe Inc has developed several computer program products that are designed to help the average user complete specific tasks. Perhaps their most widely known of these is their Photoshop program, which allows users to engage in a huge variety of editing tasks for images.
Others in the Adobe suite might include their Acrobat Reader or Illustrator. Whatever the case, the full range of products from this company can combine to help everyday people with various work-related goals or simple hobbies. If you are a regular Adobe user who needs to save work, track progress, or use the full capabilities of a license for the company’s products, chances are you need to log into the programs to do so.
Some people report having troubles staying logged into Adobe once they do it for the first session. We will talk about why this error might occur in our article. Additionally, we can address some of the possible ways in which you might keep this from happening.
We will also tackle related issues, including not being able to log in at all, whether sign-ins are necessary for certain tasks, or if there is any way you can use some of the programs without first signing into them as an authorized user.
Table of Contents
Why Do I Keep Getting Logged Out of Adobe?
The answer to why you keep getting logged out of Adobe may depend on which specific program you are using. Some of them seem to log users out after just a few seconds or minutes, and there are others that appear to present fewer issues.
In any case, it is because of some kind of glitch in the program that may be related to how the licensure for its use is processed remotely. There are ways to save and look at log files that may offer us some clues here. If you have tried various fixes, sending these log files to Adobe customer support may offer some insights.
However, the primary issue many users within the Adobe community seem to agree on is one of a license check not updating properly. When you use the full suite of Adobe programs with all of the features, you must purchase a license for the company.
Although many businesses do this, it is also possible for individuals to buy their own licenses to run on a single desktop rig or laptop computer. The license is your paid authorization to use the Adobe products of your choice with all the features you might want to have available.
When you start the program you would like to use, it begins by checking that you have a valid license. In this way, Adobe knows that you are authorized to use the program on your computer for whatever purposes you might need.
In most cases, you should stay logged in so that you are ready to begin work immediately once you start the program a second time. However, some users find that they have been inexplicably logged out in between their sessions. This necessitates logging in again and, although that wouldn’t ordinarily be an issue, some people report that they are still logged out again within the current session.
When this happens, you may lose work in progress that isn’t saved properly or lose access to many of the online features that come with the full version of the products from Adobe.
While a licensing error might be the most common cause, there could be corrupted or mismatched files that are sending out some kind of error which Adobe’s servers read. Once done, they log the user out of the system and ask them to log in once more. However, because the same files are still present on the end user’s system, this does nothing more than delay the inevitable log out again.
There are various workarounds that we can try going over in the next section. This is a problem that has cropped up for several years within the Adobe community, and you may need to try a few things in order to see what works for you.
How Do I Keep Adobe Logged In?
Before we get into some of the specific workarounds that are supposed to help Adobe’s users stay logged in, we should cover the usual fixes for problems of this type.
If you have been using Adobe’s products for a while with no issues, consider checking to see if there is a patch or update to a different version of the program.
There may be a new bug that is causing the log issue, and you may need to get a different version of the program to fix it. Otherwise, you can also try uninstalling and reinstalling the whole suite again.
This may fix the issue, but be sure to do what you can to back up your work before you do it, just in case.
The log out error may be the result of custom settings sending out some kind of error. You can test this by resetting your preferences to the default states to see if the issue goes away. To do this, you just need to use the following steps:
- Open your ’Explorer’ in Windows. Once done, go to ’View’ and tell the computer to show you ’Hidden Items’.
- Now that hidden files are visible to you, find the ’AppData’ folder in the directory under your user profile in your main drive.
- From there, locate the Adobe program with which you are having issues.
- In this folder, find the ’Preferences’ folder and move it to somewhere else. A temporary directory should do the trick here.
- Doing this should reset the preferences of the program to the default values it had before you made changes.
- Restart the program to see if you can stay logged in.
If this still doesn’t work, you can try navigating to that same location. Once there, find a .db file in the OOBE directory for Adobe.
Delete that file from the directory. Once you do, close everything related to Adobe. Restart the Creative Cloud application to see if that solved the login issue for you.
Why Is My Adobe Account Not Logging In?
On a related note, some users have trouble getting the programs to log them in at all, and they can’t even get started. In some cases, the app may not register that a user tried to log in, or it will give them an error message about being unable to verify their license. The only options they are left with are closing the program or attempting to log in again.
Since trying to get into the program again will probably produce the same result, you can instead see if you need to update Creative Cloud. This step can fix the issue for many users who can’t log in, and it seems to go away once the program is up-to-date.
However, if you know you’re already working with the current version, you may need to clear your internet cache. Although Adobe produces many separate applications for end users, much of the functionality of these programs exists online.
Everything is further connected through the Creative Cloud. Some internet settings can cause issues logging in to things like these, and clearing out the caches may solve the problem.
Why Do I Have To Sign-In To Adobe To Open a PDF?
In some cases, users can download or view PDF documents in their Adobe Reader programs with no issues. However, some people notice that they are asked to sign into their accounts repeatedly for almost every PDF file they might want to view.
This is in addition to already being signed into other products from Adobe. The most likely thing happening here is that some users are running Adobe Acrobat DC. This is a subscription service that, like many other Adobe products, requires a license check.
However, it should not require this for each document you might want to open. If it does, there is a problem with staying signed in that is similar to what we’ve discussed above. The program is signing users out too quickly, or signing out automatically when a session ends.
To fix this, you may need to try some of our tips above to make sure that you stay signed into all subscription services you might have. Because of the Creative Cloud, you may need to stay signed in to view the full documents.
Can You Use Adobe Without Signing In?
Products like Adobe Reader offer a free way for users to do things like view or edit PDF documents. If you are asked to sign in, you may see a small, x-shaped red mark at the top corner of the box that pops up.
Clicking on this should make the box disappear, and you should still be free to read PDF files normally. For most other services connected to the Creative Cloud, however, there are subscription requirements that you need to meet.
Part of these requirements include buying a license and logging into the cloud service to verify who you are.
Conclusion
Adobe creates some excellent products that seem to excel at helping end users do specific writing, imaging, or illustration tasks. However, the programs the company puts out can be slightly testy at times, and glitches can cause login prompts to appear far more frequently than they should.
Adobe has been aware of this problem for some time, and a few of the workarounds we’ve listed above are suggestions from some of the company’s experts. You can try these to see if you are able to solve the problems of either logging in or staying logged into your account between sessions.
