Does Illustrator’s upgrade installer preserve third‑party plugin manifests during a failed upgrade?

Does the Installer Preserve Plugin Manifests?

No, the Adobe Illustrator upgrade installer does not explicitly "preserve" third-party plugin manifests through a backup process because it does not target the Plug-ins directory for modification or deletion during the upgrade or rollback phase. Third-party manifests (typically .aip or .xml files) generally remain in place because the installer's file-operation checklist excludes user-added content in the default plugin folders.

Manual Restoration Procedure

If plugin menus are missing after a failed upgrade and rollback, it is usually because the application is looking for manifests in a version-specific path that was not populated. To reliably restore these menus, follow this manual procedure:

1. Locate the Source: Navigate to the Plug-ins folder of the previous stable version (e.g., /Applications/Adobe Illustrator 2023/Plug-ins on macOS or C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 2023\Plug-ins on Windows).
2. Identify Manifests: Locate the specific third-party folders containing both the plugin binaries (.aip) and their associated manifest files.
3. Copy to Current Version: Copy these folders into the Plug-ins directory of the current (rolled-back) Illustrator installation.
4. Restart Illustrator: Launch the application to trigger a re-scan of the plugin directory.

Preservation of Settings and Potential Conflicts

This procedure preserves the plugin binaries and their registration manifests, but it does not restore plugin-specific configuration settings if those were stored in the Prefs folder (which is handled separately by the Illustrator Recovery folder).

Known Limitations:

• Version Mismatch: Copying manifests from a significantly older version to a newer one may cause the plugin to fail to load if the API has changed, though this is less common during a simple rollback to a previous version.
• Path Redirection: If you have redirected your plugin folder via preferences to a custom drive, the installer may not recognize the exclusion, potentially leading to missing links.

Verification

To verify that manifests were not altered during the failure, check the installer logs located at %temp%/Adobe/Installer (Windows) or ~/Library/Logs/Adobe/Installer (macOS). The absence of entries referencing the Plug-ins directory confirms the installer did not attempt to modify those files.

Note: To provide a more specific recommendation, please specify if you are using a custom installation path for your plugins.