Sidekick Shows as Acquired, but the Plugin Is Missing

What it looks like

You’ve subscribed to Sidekick, but InDesign doesn’t have it. Usually it’s one or more of these:

• Adobe Exchange shows Sidekick as Acquired.
• Creative Cloud doesn’t list it under Manage Plugins, or says “No plugins acquired”.
• Creative Cloud (or Exchange) shows the $9.95/month or Buy button, as if you had never subscribed.
• The plugin is gone from InDesign’s Plugins menu. Sometimes it was never there. Sometimes it worked fine and then disappeared, often right when the trial turned into a paid subscription.

On the AI assistant’s side, Sidekick keeps running and reports that the InDesign plugin isn’t connected, because there is no plugin to connect to.

Don’t click Buy

If your subscription is active, buying again would most likely start a second subscription alongside the first, and then you’d be untangling two. Keep the one you have and work through the steps below.

Why this happens

Sidekick is sold through Adobe Exchange, and Adobe’s payment partner FastSpring handles the billing. Your subscription is stored on Adobe’s side, and the Creative Cloud app installs the plugin when it sees that subscription. The problem is between those two: Adobe knows you’ve acquired it, but Creative Cloud hasn’t picked that up.

This isn’t specific to Sidekick. Makers of other paid plugins on Adobe Exchange see the same problem, and Adobe has not published a single cause for it. The known causes are an out-of-date Creative Cloud app, being signed in to a different Adobe profile than the one that made the purchase, and, on Adobe’s side, a subscription that didn’t come through when a trial or renewal went through.

What to try

Work through these in order. After each step, check Manage Plugins in the Creative Cloud app again.

1. Update the Creative Cloud app

This is the fix that has most often been confirmed to work, and it matters especially after a macOS or Windows update.

1. Open the Creative Cloud app and go to the Apps tab.
2. Click the ⋯ next to Installed apps and choose Check for updates.
3. Install anything it offers.
4. Quit the Creative Cloud app completely, reopen it, and check Manage Plugins.

2. Sign out and back in

In the Creative Cloud app, click your avatar, sign out, and sign back in with the account you used on Adobe Exchange. That makes Creative Cloud fetch your purchases again.

3. Check for a second Adobe profile

Adobe lets one email address have two separate profiles, typically a personal one and a business one, if your company or organization also has a Creative Cloud plan. They look like the same account, because the email address is the same, but a purchase made under one profile doesn’t show up in the other.

To check:

1. On exchange.adobe.com, note which name appears at the top right. That’s the profile Sidekick was acquired under.
2. In the Creative Cloud app, click your avatar and see which profile is active, and whether you’re offered a choice to switch profiles.
3. If they differ, switch Creative Cloud to the profile that acquired Sidekick. If the button changes from $9.95/month to Install, that was the cause.

4. Ask Adobe to restore your access

If Sidekick still doesn’t appear, the fix is on Adobe’s side, and only Adobe can see your order. Email [email protected] and include:

• Your Order ID. It starts with “ADO” and is in the confirmation email from FastSpring ([email protected]).
• Screenshots of what you see on Adobe Exchange and in the Creative Cloud app.
• When it started, and whether it happened right after your trial ended.
• The case number, if you’ve had this problem before and Adobe fixed it then. “The same problem is back” is a stronger starting point than a new case.

Ask them to restore your access to the subscription you already have. Adobe support may ask you to run their Log Collector tool and send them the file it creates. That’s normal for this kind of problem.

What we can’t do

We can’t see or change your subscription. We have no access to orders or subscriptions, so the fix has to come from Adobe. We also can’t send you the plugin as a separate file to install by hand: a copy installed outside Creative Cloud wouldn’t be tied to your subscription and wouldn’t receive updates.

Once the plugin shows up in Manage Plugins and installs, you don’t need to set up anything else. The AI assistant side is already done, and Sidekick connects on its own.

Questions?

If you’re stuck anywhere in these steps, reach us at [email protected] and tell us which step you reached. We’ll help you get it sorted with Adobe.