PS – One last note, for those who would like to make a Creative Suite 5 or 5.5 purchase that will run on both the PC and Mac – it’s not widely known or understood, but check out a CS5.5 volume (or business) license, which are multi-platform. It wouldn’t hurt, however, to try asking again with a careful explanation of your circumstance… It could be helpful too if you happened to have a record of your original conversation.
And if you’re not already on CS5.5, then that would technically qualify as an upgrade from the release you have.Īpologies if this doesn’t work out in your case, and it is a policy that does cause some questions from time to time – but hopefully that explains at least a little on the mechanics and logistics of the situation. Since they no longer sell CS5 or earlier, the only new software they can send is Creative Suite 5.5. So the challenge is that to do a crossgrade to change platforms, they need to send a new copy of the Creative Suite for the other operating system. Hi Christopher, sorry if Adobe wasn’t clearer about their policy when you made your initial purchase… The difficulty is that once a new version comes out, the company doesn’t carry, issue, or sell the older one(s) any longer – that has been their operating procedure for many years. So really it’s up to you, but either way you should be able to work it out using these techniques if you run into any difficulties. In both cases it’s basically no cost, and you can do everything online to avoid time-consuming phone calls.
So the answer to your question really depends on whether you want to go with the established, tried-and-true method outlined in the article above, or whether you want to take a shot with the new set-up where in principle you might not need a crossgrade application when moving from CS2/CS3/CS4 on Windows to CS5 on a Mac, or vice versa.
The difference now with CS5 is that the upgrade installer should accept the serial number from a qualifying earlier version on a different platform or language, which simplifies the cross-platform and cross-language process… However, for some reason (complexity?) this does not always work, in which case you would need to contact Adobe customer support to hopefully fix it.
Hi Jason, thanks for your question – and that’s a very good one… In theory, your scenario could work without submitting a crossgrade – but in practice, your mileage may vary.