If you are trying to view web pages that contain flash content on Windows Server 2012 r2 then you may find that it does not work. You are then led to a page on the Adobe website tells you that Flash player is already installed on Windows 8 and that you do not need to install it. This post explains how to enable Flash Player on Windows Server 2012.

Message from Adobe Website informing you that Flash Player is already installed on Windows Server 2012 r2   The page then goes on to provide instructions as to how to enable Flash, this basically consists of:

Ensuring that the flash player add-on is enabled.
Checking that Active-X filtering is disabled.
You will probably find that these instructions do not work for you as flash player is not listed in the Internet Explorer Add-ons.

How to install Flash Player on Windows Server 2012 r2

In order to install Flash Player on Windows Server 2012 you need to install the Desktop Experience Feature. To do this, do the following:

Go into server manager.
Click add roles and features: Using server manager to install flash player on Windows Server 2012
Press next until you reach the “Features” page.
Tick the box “Desktop Experience” which is hidden under the “User Interfaces and Infrastructure” feature: Installing the desktop experience to enable Flash player in Windows Server 2012
You will then have to accept the installation of some other features to support the installation of desktop experience
The features are installed and the server is rebooted: Desktop Experience Feature being installed on Windows Server 2012 r2
Or if you prefer, you can install with the simple but so effective Windows Powershell command:

Install-WindowsFeature Desktop-Experience
The reason I wanted to have access to Flash Player on this particular server was so that I could access the vSphere Web client, which uses flash. Hope this helps someone.