It seems to be a fairly common problem for users to come across “grayed out” links and updates in Adobe programs. There appears to be a variety of reasons for the unavailability of these items ranging from licensing issues to program variations. We’ll explore a couple of the most typical issues here.

Photoshop 9.0.2 update’s and Photoshop CS2 options are grayed out

You can’t select the Photoshop CS2 app from the update menu because it is grayed out, which means you can’t install the Adobe Photoshop 9.0.2 update. But your Adobe Update Manager shows that 9.0.2 isn’t installed and is available for download even though you’ve downloaded it already.

If you’ve run into this problem, the odds are that you are working on an Intel-based Mac or on Mac OS 10.3.x. Here’s the good news, you can simply ignore the Adobe Update Manager prompts because it’s only a matter of Update Manager failing to register the update. The file that tells Update Manager when Photoshop was updated is different on Mac OS 10.4.x than the Intel-based Macs or 10.3.x. See? Easy!

InDesign Save and Save As are grayed out

If you are noticing that your Save and Save As options in InDesign are grayed out, you may need the InDesign 2.0.1 update. This update addresses several issues that exist in InDesign 2.0. In Windows, if the default location for the "My Documents" folder is changed, the Save and Save As menu commands in InDesign are not grayed out anymore thanks to the update.

Acrobat Standard Activation Transfer is grayed out

When you try to install the update for Adobe Acrobat 7.0.5, you have to determine which version you have. The Standard Update for Retail Version- English, French, German, and Japanese is for the Acrobat Standard retail version only. There are two versions, the retail and the volume-licensed copy.

If you have a volume-licensed copy, you can’t install the retail’s standard update. To find out which version you have:

1. Open your Acrobat 7 Standard program.

2. Select Help from the menu and look for Activation Transfer. This menu item appears in only the retail version of Acrobat Standard, not the volume license version.

Once you have figured out whether you have the retail version or the volume-licensed version you can download the correct update directly from www.adobe.com. You can do a search for the versions from Adobe’s downloads page.