new textbox is created everytime I click on existing blank textbox, thus unable to type in text into

It seems that Photoshop is now treating the empty text box as a non-editable layer. Try selecting the Type Tool (T), then double-clicking directly on the text layer in the Layers panel instead of the canvas. If that doesn't work, delete the layer and create a new text box — sometimes the actual bug is fixed.

I have scripts which create an empty but formatted text layer where I can just type my text directly in. To allow editing, I double-click the layer thumbnail in the Layers panel.

#target photoshop

testText();

function testText(){
    if(documents.length > 0){
        var originalDialogMode = app.displayDialogs;
        app.displayDialogs = DialogModes.ERROR;
        var originalRulerUnits = preferences.rulerUnits;
        preferences.rulerUnits = Units.PIXELS;
        const Sz = 42;
        const Ld = 42;
        const Fnt = 'Calibri-Bold'
        const Jst = Justification.CENTER
        try{
            var docRef = activeDocument;
            var LayerRef = docRef.artLayers.add();
            LayerRef.kind = LayerKind.TEXT;
            var TextRef = LayerRef.textItem;
            TextRef.contents = '';
            TextRef.position = new Array(500, 80);
            preferences.rulerUnits = Units.POINTS;
            TextRef.size = Sz;
            TextRef.useAutoLeading = false;
            TextRef.leading = Ld;
            TextRef.font = Fnt;
            TextRef.justification = Jst;
            TextRef.autoKerning = AutoKernType.METRICS;
            }
        catch(e){
            alert(e + e.line);
            preferences.rulerUnits = originalRulerUnits;
            app.displayDialogs = originalDialogMode;
            return;
            }
        preferences.rulerUnits = originalRulerUnits;
        app.displayDialogs = originalDialogMode;
        }
    else{
        alert('You must have a document open to run this script.');
        return;
        }
    return;
    }

Don't do that 🙂

Photoshop's text engine stores information about styles, paragraphs in the form of intervals with a link to a specific character, that is, all text formatting settings are stored directly in its content. If there is no text, then there is nowhere to store information about the formatting and the layer turns into a dummy (the layer size becomes 0, the style sheets are cleared).

Yes, there are ways to assign text content to such a layer using scripts like this

activeDocument.activeLayer.textItem.contents = 'blablabla'

however, this does not make sense since all text formatting settings are already lost.

If you need to temporarily remove the text, then use placeholder text (lorem ipsum or any set of meaningless characters).

You can also create presets of paragraph styles and character styles and reuse the formatting you created (however, unfortunately, these presets are stored only in the document in which they were created and are not available for other documents)