Remove ligatures Photoshop Elements 14

Another iffy explanation, not considered yet, is a case where you may have an integrated graphics device doing battle with a video expansion card.  Try turning one or the other off to test and verify drivers are up to date.  I'm swinging in the dark here.  

One other thing to try is to delete your current set of Calibri fonts and reinstall from another source.  (Save/backup your current ones first.)  I don't know whether the one linked by Jeff is a free font or not. I've just looked at my machine and I have at least 5 different versions of the calibri.ttf file stored in various locations.  The current version in use is from Windows 10 and is version 6.x.  I also have an earlier version that is 1.02.  The file sizes of the different versions vary in size.

I know you've tried resetting General Preferences (Ctl-k) but have you tried the Reset Tool, Reset All Tools options?  I'm not sure it'll make any difference but it's worth a try.  You've already ruled out the possibility that it's a computer problem, or that it's an OS problem or that it has anything to do with a possible bug in PSE 14 and you've been a pretty good sport about it.

So in both 2020 and pse 14 even when you make a new document and use the Calibri font the Ligatures still show up?

As I understand things, Calibri won't display properly running PSE 14 under Windows 7 or under Windows 10.  Even now, installing PSE 2020 hasn't made any difference.  Are you using the exact same computer hardware as when this all began and has PSE always been run directly from your C drive?

UPDATE: Unfortunately, none of these solutions worked. At Adobe's request (after trying to sell me PSE 2020) was to download 2020 version, but even that didn't work - the ligatures were still there. Uggghhhh, please be our super hero and help us solve this!

I would reset all the pse 14 preferences and see if that solves the issue.

In the pse 14 editor go to Edit>Preferences>General, click on Reset Preferences on next launch, then restsrt the pse 14 editor.

It was weird that i had the same issue in pse 14, but all the other pse versions i tried including

pse 6, pse 11, 13, 15 and 2020 didn't have the same issue, so i reset the pse 14 preferences and

that seemed to fix it.

Greg_S.,

You can get the Calibri font from adobe, which does display the Discretionary ligatures in photoshop elements 14, though i believe newer pse versions didn't do that including pse 2020, which has the Discretionary ligatures turned off for that font.

I'll have to look when i get home at some other pse versions.

https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/calibri

I had no idea what a text ligature was until seeing your post.  I am on a Win 10 OS, and I have several varieties of Calibri in my fonts.  I have tried all of them with the letter combinations in your screenshot and none have produced a ligature.  So, I am guessing that it is dependent on the the font that you are using.  A quick Google search shows that some fonts have "discretionary" ligatures that can be turned off in certain applications.  I can't see that Elements would have any such feature.  So, this is possibly something that has to be taken care of at the OS level, or you will have to choose another font.  Perhaps even another Calibri font will work for you.  Have you tried more than one?