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Answered

Numbers showing as symbols when using Edit and adding Text

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I have a PDF document. I want to add a text box and I used 'Edit' then 'Text' under ADD CONTENT. The letters come out OK but numbers are showing as symbols. I searched for the issue and found something to do with changing the language from English with Arabic Support, but that hasn't worked. Also if I type hyphen in the text box, it starts typing the letters from right to left. Such a simple task is so painful and I end up having to use InDesign. The image attached I tried to type 'abc-12345' and you can see the result.

I am so frustrated by Adobe Acrobat. It is so buggy in the last year or so and trying to contact Adobe is impossible. This is a paid subscription and the programme rarely works how it used to. It wastes so much time in my work trying to resolve the issue.

Edit and convert PDFs

try67Correct answer

Community Expert

These are actually "Hindi" digits (used in Arabic). Go to the application Preferences, Language tab, and tick off the box next to "Hindi Digits".

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happy_Whisper28f3

Participant

Have you tried changing the font to Arial? It may be a font-related issue. You could also test the same text in a new PDF to see if the problem persists.

If Acrobat still doesn't work, you can try PDFly XO's free online PDF editor and see if it works for you.

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His Place

Participant

try67 you are a marvel. Such a simple fix. Thank you

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heleno6192781

Participant

Wow. This is insane. I nearly cancelled subscription over this. Why on earth would it have arabic as default and not pick up system settings? Despite haveing English (UK) as my default system-wide it had ignored that and not only did I have to take the arabic settings off but I had to add english. I’ve never had that issue with any other software - even adobe’s own. Creative suite has always picked up that my default is english.

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PeterFacey

Inspiring

Just to say that I had this problem today with a brand new Windows 11 PC to which I had installed Acrobat using my Creative Cloud subscription. EDIT/PREFERENCES/LANGUAGE/APPLICATION LANGUAGE was set to "English with support for Arabic". Changing it to "English" solved the problem. But why, oh why, did Adobe decide that I resident in the UK wanted Arabic support?

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simon_2898

Participant

The language i found in spelling is also set to Arabic as default 🤷‍♂

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paul_5168

Participant

Thank you this resolved my problem - madness that Adobe defaulted to that setting following an update.

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try67

Correct answer

Community Expert

These are actually "Hindi" digits (used in Arabic). Go to the application Preferences, Language tab, and tick off the box next to "Hindi Digits".

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Kelly35329788w1wa

Participating Frequently

I cannot tell you how helpful this answer is - very much appreciated. It is staggering to me that working in a UK office with 100% english language being used, why on earth Acrobat would default to this insane setting. I was about to give up and send a handwritten amendment because the software is so useless and frustrating. Hard to believe the Acrobat is more awkward to use now that it was in 2004. Infuriating!

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Sam35141632gvq3

Participant

Just to say - I had exactly same issue and also find this software rewally buggy - very nearly cancelled the subs a few times!

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