idea ArcGIS Enterprise unable to Return Licenses to my.esri.com in ArcGIS Enterprise Ideas

ArcGIS Enterprise unable to Return Licenses to my.esri.com

RichardDaniels — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:06:09 GMT

In ArcGIS Enterprise you may license the server multiple ways, to include over the internet, by providing an ECP directly, building a 'secure' request via a form (and submitting/receiving the license file from different machine out side the firewall), or using my.esri.com to generate directly generate the provisioning file. Issue is once you have licensed a server there is currently no way to RETURN a license. This could easily be required if you had a failover license, developer license, staging license, and production license for the same product and later you wanted to rearchitect your environment. Similar to the old ArcGIS Administrator, we need a Deauthorize button in the authorization wizard that will Return the license so it re-appears in my.esri.com.

Re: ArcGIS Enterprise unable to Return Licenses to my.esri.com

JoshuaBixby — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:04:08 GMT

I will upvote this idea, but I am definitely not holding my breath. My last job was working for a large federal government agency with a sizeable Enterprise Agreement. This issue was raised to Esri multiple times over 10+ years (could even be 20), and Esri expressed no interest in supporting deauthorization of ArcGIS Server licenses.

Re: ArcGIS Enterprise unable to Return Licenses to my.esri.com

SimonSchütte_ct — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:19:11 GMT

First: Deauthorize ArcGIS Server Licenses

In My Esri, go to "License Files" -> "ArcGIS Server and Desktop". In the "Action" column you can click on the red button "Cancel License File".

This will free up your license and you can recreate it through the license wizard.
Deauthorized licenses may no longer be used and have to be replaced.

Already answered here: ArcGIS Server 11.1 Standalone Server Deauthorize License

Re: ArcGIS Enterprise unable to Return Licenses to my.esri.com

JoshuaBixby — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:31:19 GMT

@SimonSchütte_ct , the Esri Support article linked to is less "deauthorizing" and more "disabling." Deauthorizing implies returning the license, which is what happens on the desktop side, and renaming the local keycodes file doesn't return anything to Esri. And cancelling a license file isn't exactly the same as deauthorizing licenses either. Cancelling a license file does return activations back to the pool, which is the same outcome as deauthorizing a license, but not all ArcGIS Server licenses are activated using a license file.

For me I see the links as workarounds to Esri not having a proper deauthorization mechanism for ArcGIS Server licenses, which is why I voted for this idea, but as I already mentioned I won't hold my breath they will ever create a proper deauthorization mechanism for ArcGIS Server licenses.

Re: ArcGIS Enterprise unable to Return Licenses to my.esri.com

RichardDaniels — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:16:24 GMT

I just verified that the 'Cancel License File' only shows files you personally created, not those created by other users. This happens if I provided an ECP number to them and then they use the License Wizard. Canceling a file returns:

"If this license file has been provided to a user, please inform the user of the cancellation to insure license availability. Cancelling a license file does not disable authorization numbers the file contains that have already been distributed to users."

So (1) the license is potentially still active/in use and (2) the activated count does not decrease.

As a side note I discussed this with ESRI Support, and it turns out during the Authorization process they never actually 'grab' a MAC address, IP address, or other unique machine specific signature. This means they don't have a machine <-> license association that one often expects. This is partly a result of supporting VM servers, since at each restart the 'server' is not locked to the same hardware.

*This does not mean they don't need a 'return or report a lost license' process; it actually means they need a better one since the 'loss' of a VM is common occurrence.