Preview text box typing upside down

This was a bug that affected pages that had been rotated. Quitting or force-quitting Preview would not have fixed it.

The bug was fixed in 13.2, so that it is all it takes: update your OS.

Give this a try: boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and test to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE 1: Safe Mode boot can take up to 3 - 5 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

NOTE 2: if you have a wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries connect it with its charging cable before booting into Safe Mode. This makes it act as a wired keyboard as will insure a successful boot into Safe Mode.

Thank you. I was able to download the file.

I see the same issue when annotating it.

However, if I print it to PDF, then the resulting file does NOT have the problem.

Clearly, something in the way this file was encoded is having an effect.

I also tested this file in an old mac running High Sierra, and it all worked there, so

it seems to be a combination of Ventura and some peculiar formatting of the PDF.

Also: the file was apparently created with some software named "PDFCreator". Can you elaborate on that? I only found something by that for windows, not the mac.

I have a workaround!

1. For me it only happens if my document has been rotated (left or right). Then I get those same symptoms reported here.
2. Workaround #1 - create a text box and type a few chars (any rubbish). Then open yr notepad and type want you really want. Copy and paste into the TextBox in Preview - reduces headaches
3. Workaround #2 - when you need to insert a text box, insert it. Then command-R or command-L so the problem goes away. Now add text to the text box. Finally rotate it back.
4. My guess: It's a bug in Ventura that doesn't take care of Text Box Annotations once document has been rotated.

Hope it helps!

Cheers

Hi,

We had a student come into the help desk with this issue. She downloaded the file again from the teachers course and we found that the the first page in the document from the teacher was portrait and the second page in the document was landscape and it had rotate that document 90 degrees. The student had rotated the second document to portrait.

Fix - We dragged page 2 to the desktop, rotated, print to pdf. This copy worked. I was then able to drag this back to the original document and Preview allowed 1 page to be portrait and the 2nd page to be landscape. The text is right side up now.

The consensus among this group is that upgrading to macOS 13.2 resolves this problem.

Check your "About This Mac" from the Apple logo in the extreme upper left corner of your screen, then upgrade to 13.2 if your current macOS version is anything numerically smaller than this. Then try again. Let us know if this resolves it.

The consensus among this group is that upgrading to macOS 13.2 resolves this problem.

Check your "About This Mac" from the Apple logo in the extreme upper left corner of your screen, then upgrade to 13.2 if your current macOS version is anything numerically smaller than this. Then try again. Let us know if this resolves it.

It only happens if you rotate the PDF.

Solution: Open PDF. Rotate. Export PDF. Open that and edit it. Text will be normal.

I noticed that the file was a HEIC file. When I changed the file to a JEPG file the problem was not there.

etresoft wrote:

hlevinger wrote:

(Apple, are you listening???)

As I'm sure someone has already said - NO! Apple does not read these forums. This is a user-to-user tech support forum for Apple products.

If anyone wants to post a link to any file that can reproduce this problem, we would be happy to look at it and tell you more. But until that happens, until somebody actually gives us some tiny scrap of data, you got nothin'.

I can do better. I can tell you how to make one, since I just found out how to make it happen.

Take any pdf file. Rotate one page by 90 degrees (e.g. with Command-L)

Add a text annotation (command-control-T). It will be upside down while you type, and then be upright when you step out of it.

AFAICT, only 90 and 270 degrees cause; a 180 degree rotation appears to work ok with annotations.

robertfromscarborough wrote:

I've attached the original file. This file has never been opened in preview AFAIK it's straight from AutoCAD Revit.

Thank you.

I can now reproduce this bug and confirm that it is definitely a bug in Ventura. The trick is that the PDF has to be rotated. Apple seems to be applying the rotation transformation incorrectly and applying it to the text field while typing. As soon as you finish typing, it will right itself.

And I found another bug too. If you re-open a PDF that already has an annotation, there will be a phantom annotation if you try to move your annotation object. It will go away if you close the document and reopen.

Other users have also found a more serious bug in the redaction feature. I can't seem to reproduce that bug in 13.1, so maybe it has already been fixed.

You can post a general complaint about Ventura, Preview, or Apple's ongoing software quality problems here: Product Feedback - Apple

If you want to get more specific, you can file an official bug report here: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/

But to be clear, make sure your bug report is as well-written as robertfromscarborough's post. You have to be ridiculously specific. Don't assume that they will try to rotate the PDF on their own. They will not. You have to tell them PREFERABLY IN ALL CAPS. While I was able to generate PDF and reproduce the problem, you can't rely on that either. That's asking them to do more work. More work means "look at this later". You have to do it for them. Attach a PDF as part of your instructions to reproduce the problem. You can mention that you can rotate any PDF to reproduce the problem, but you must also attach. This is not an option.

If you do this, and if many other people do similarly, and if you really lucky, it might get fixed by May. Maybe. Personally, considering how few people have noticed and/or complained, I think you missed the window. You'll need to retest in macOS 14 in the fall after Preview gets re-written yet again. When you find additional bugs, as you most certainly will, DO NOT INCLUDE them. Write a new bug report for each bug. Make sure each one has instructions to reproduce, even if they are identical. Again - this is not an option. Each bug report has to have the attachment PDF, even if all 5 bug reports use the same PDF and virtually identical instructions.

Personally, I haven't the foggiest idea why people absolutely have to have the very latest version of anything Apple. This isn't new. Back when I was younger and more naive, I was a beta tester for Apple. Preview was one of my favourites. I could always find bugs in Preview. I was in grad school at the time, so I used Preview pretty heavily for PDFs of articles I had to read. But every time a new build came out, I would re-test my bugs. Each time I re-tested, I almost always found a new bug. Most of these bugs eventually got fixed before release, but it clearly wasn't a priority. And that was in the days before yearly releases.

These days, there are no more betas. It should be obvious to anyone that Ventura is beta-quality. I don't use it for my main production computer. I have it installed on my older computer that I use for testing. I have it on a VM so that I can test on this Monterey computer. I usually upgrade just before WWDC in June. By then, all bugs that are going to get fixed, have been fixed. If not, they are well-understood by then and I can more easily work around them.

Even to post those two links above requires fairly detailed knowledge of Apple bugs. I know that going to either site is going to scramble my cookies in Safari and will require that I type all this in again if I'm not careful. I have to use Safari Technology Preview to copy the links because it has a separate Apple session. And I also copy and paste my entire post just in case. Welcome to my world.

Yes, I just applied Ventura 13.2 and the problem is gone. I tested just before updating and the problem was still there, now no longer there.

@etresoft Thanks for the nudge towards 13.2!

I have this problem now too.

This started happening to me since the update to macOS 13 (2020 MBP 13" i5 Intel). The files that I am annotating where I experience this behavior are generated by a client of mine that is apparently using "PDFCreator Free 4.2.0" according to the Inspector tool in Preview.

Preview on macOS 12 did not have a problem with these files.

I did a quick test with files from MS Word and Excel for Mac, made PDFs from them using both the Mac print dialog box and MS "save a copy as" method. Annotating with Preview on these PDFs was normal, no upside down while typing.

(My annotations are often made by inserting an arrow from the Annotate menu, then double-clicking on it to create text associated with the arrow).

I wish I knew how to fix this, but I figured I could at least provide a little more data. Even though it may well be an issue with 3rd-party software, hopefully it's a compatibility issue that Apple can fix!

hlevinger wrote:

Thank you etresoft for your wonderfully sarcastic response!

For your information and gratification, here is a screenshot of the problem.

I wasn't being sarcastic at all. But I also wasn't asking for a screenshot. I was asking for a link where I can download a file that demonstrates the problem. I've seen plenty of screenshots. I don't doubt this is a problem.

But without being able to reproduce it on my own, I can't do anything more than give you links where you can file general product feedback to Apple here, or file an official bug report using the other "feedback" site. I don't like to do that. I can't imagine that people like to see such a lame response. But that's literally all I can do without more information.

If I had such an actual document, I may be able to find out exactly what is causing it and then tell you exactly how to avoid and/or correct it. I'm saying I may be able to literally fix it for you. I do this on a regular basis. But I can't do it unless I can see and experience the problem on my own computer. I need to look into the document to see just where the matrix transformation is being applied and how Apple is getting confused by it. I'm a software developer myself. I deal with this exact problem. I don't want people using my software to see flipped and inverted text in my app because some Apple framework is doing something wrong. It is in my interest to fix this for you. But I can only do that if you meet me halfway.

I have upgraded to MacOS Ventura 13.2 and have not re-encountered this problem.

Since it always was an intermittent, unpredictable issue, I will repost and try to link to a live file for your consideration if it should recur.

At this moment, I consider this problem solved. Only time will tell.

I thank everyone, especially "etresoft" for your patience with trying to address the issue. Greatly appreciated.