Request Adobe Licensing

Request Creative Cloud for Students License
NOTE: For student educational/instructional use. An instructor or academic department must submit the request.

Request Adobe Licensing for Cornell Employees
NOTE: For University business/administrative use. Includes student employees

Members of the Cornell community can take advantage of several different licensing programs for Adobe products. Some of these programs are available at no cost; others have a fee associated with the license. Some extend usage rights to personally-owned equipment, while other programs are only available to Cornell staff and faculty. See the particular program for details.

• More information about Adobe Creative Cloud licensing
• More information about Adobe Acrobat Pro licensing

Licensing Overview

Please see our Adobe Licensing FAQ page.

Adobe Creative Cloud and Acrobat Pro: Enterprise Licensing Available

Cornell staff and faculty with a Cornell business need can request a license for either Acrobat Pro or the full Creative Cloud All Apps Plan. When determining if you need either Acrobat Pro or the full Creative Cloud All Apps Plan, consult our decision chart.

Students at Cornell who are taking a course that requires use of Creative Cloud software are eligible for a Cornell-paid Creative Cloud license for that semester. Please ask your instructor or academic department to send in a request on your behalf.

See also our Working with PDFs Comparison Table.

For a listing of applications available through Creative Cloud, see the product list below.

Faculty, Staff, and Students: Individual Named-User licensing for Creative Cloud is available. Please see our Adobe Creative Cloud Enterprise Licensing article for more information.

Technical Support Providers: Please see CU Software's Adobe Creative Cloud for Technical Support Providers article for information about installing Creative Cloud in a Managed Desktop environment, or for computers that are not assigned to individual employees, such as lab computers.

More information about our Creative Cloud Enterprise License can be found on our Creative Cloud Enterprise Licensing page.

Creative Cloud Enterprise License Product List

Cornell University has signed an agreement to provide Adobe Creative Cloud at no cost to Cornell staff and faculty who have a business need for the software. The Creative Cloud All Apps Plan includes the following Adobe desktop products:

The Creative Cloud All Apps Plan also includes the following Creative Cloud online services: 

For more information about Creative Cloud, please see our Creative Cloud Enterprise Licensing article.

Acrobat Pro Licensing

Cornell staff and faculty with a business need only for Acrobat Pro can receive a Named-User license. For more information, please see our Acrobat Pro Standalone Licensing article.

Adobe Sign

Adobe Sign is a separate product used to digitally sign electronic documents. Adobe Sign is not part of Creative Cloud and is managed independently. For more information about Adobe Sign, please see the Electronic Signature article. 

Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is an authoring tool that is used for creating e-learning content such as software demonstrations, software simulations, branched scenarios, and randomized quizzes in HTML5 format. We have a very limited number of Captivate licenses that are available for University personnel to use to create educational content. If you have a University business need for this software, please fill out the CU Software Licensing Request form.

Other Adobe Products

If you are a Cornell employee and have a University business need for additional Adobe products not covered by Cornell’s existing license agreements, you will need to purchase individual commercial retail licensing. Please work with your department’s local IT support team and/or finance team and follow your department’s local procedure to acquire new software products. If your department does not have a specific local process to follow, then please follow the Cornell University IT Governance Statement of Need process to purchase a new software product.

Download Adobe Software

Adobe Creative Cloud and Acrobat Pro DC

Cornell-owned computers: Work with your local IT support team to install Creative Cloud software onto your Cornell-provided computer. Most Cornell personnel do not have permission to install software onto Cornell-owned computers.

Personally-owned computers: Your Named-User license does permit you to install the software onto your personally-owned devices. For more information, see our Creative Cloud Enterprise Licensing Details article. 

Other Adobe Products

If you have purchased Adobe products through a different channel, please follow the instructions provided by Adobe and/or the third-party retailer. Please note that you cannot use Cornell’s Single Sign-On service to activate any Adobe products purchased outside of Cornell’s central Adobe license agreement: You will need to register your Cornell email address as a “Personal ID” to use such products. Please also note that in general you will not be able to be signed in to both a Cornell-provided Adobe license and a personal Adobe license at the same time on the same computer.