Nine-digit numbers become phone numbers in a pdf

[BugsJane]

[walt.farrell]

Sounds like a helpful function your PDF viewer is providing.

Have you tried a different viewer?

 

[h_d]

17 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

your PDF viewer

MacOS Preview. It's clever like that. Not an Affinity thing.

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by h_d
Added screen grab

[BugsJane]

Thanks to both of you for your input.

No, I have not tried a different viewer.

Are you suggesting Adobe Acrobat Reader for Apple Mac?

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, BugsJane said:

Are you suggesting Adobe Acrobat Reader for Apple Mac?

I have no idea what alternatives might exist on Mac. Perhaps a Mac user can suggest one that isn't this helpful.

[h_d]

 

2 minutes ago, BugsJane said:

Are you suggesting Adobe Acrobat Reader for Apple Mac?

I have tried Acrobat Reader for Apple Mac with my test pdf and it doesn't display a phone number popup. 

[h_d]

In macOS Preview you can ctrl-click on the number and then choose Copy from the contextual menu:

[h_d]

You can find out about macOS data detectors here. Doesn't look as though they can be turned off in Preview. 

[BugsJane]

h_d, I just downloaded Adobe Acrobat and it does work for me, too.

I will suggest that option for those who receive my pdf.

I couldn't find a way to turn off the telephone number pop-up in Preview either.

I have been working all day on this problem that has been puzzling me.

h_d, you have been very helpful.

[v_kyr]

Well if Preview.app lacks the "Edit > Substitutions > Data Detection" menu entry in order to uncheck it, then it can't be done this way and one has to try out another way via the MacOS defaults system (checking for some possible Preview.app defaults entry option setting therefor). - See therfor the manpage for the defaults command, aka "man defaults" in Terminal.app.

See also ...

• Disabling automatic phone number detection
• How do I turn off phone number recognition on a Mac Preview?
• ... and so on ...

[h_d]

1 minute ago, v_kyr said:

one has to try out another way via the MacOS defaults system (checking for some possible Preview.app defaults entry option setting therefor). - See therfor the manpage for the defaults command, aka "man defaults" in Terminal.app.

Life's too short.

[v_kyr]

2 minutes ago, h_d said:

Life's too short.

Than you have to live with that, until some MacOS update probably offers to disable that in Preview.app too.

[h_d]

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

some MacOS update probably offers to disable that in Preview.app too.

Never gonna happen.

[v_kyr]

Try that and see if it influences the Preview.app behavior for showing up nine-digit numbers ...

• How to turn Off Live Text on Mac
• How to Disable Live Text on Mac

 

[BugsJane]

v_kyr, thanks for your effort.  I tried this, but it didn't give the results I wanted on the numbers.

[MikeTO]

33 minutes ago, BugsJane said:

v_kyr, thanks for your effort.  I tried this, but it didn't give the results I wanted on the numbers.

That won't work because Live Text is doing optical character recognition on an image, not detecting data in your PDF. Sadly, there's no way to turn these things off.

This isn't an Affinity issue and I think even if you've done several pages you should consider going back and removing the IDs and linking the names to create a more useful document. But if you don't want to do that, just preface all the Find a Grave IDs with https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/. Then Preview will detect them as clickable URLs rather than as phone numbers. You don't even need to hyperlink them in Affinity. This is what it would look like if you prefaced the IDs with the first part of the URL:

If you really want the IDs before the names and you don't want to include the full URLs, you can cheat. Set the first part of the URL to have no fill and leave just the number as black. This will trick Preview and it won't be detected as a phone number or URL. I tried it and it worked fine. At least unless Apple changes its data detectors again.

Cheers

[v_kyr]

Then one has to hunt via Apple's defaults program after possible settings therefor.

A call in Terminal.app of ...

Quote

> defaults read com.apple.Preview
... or ...
> defaults read com.apple.Preview > output.txt

... will list or output all default Preview.app settings in the terminal, the second call shown above will output and write those into an output.txt file. - Now inspecting that output.txt file will show if there is possibly some setting related to data detectors etc. here. - If there is some bool setting for those like "True/Yes" or the like, it can also be instead disabled then by setting it to (False/no") via a corresponding defaults write ... call for that option then.

However the whole depends on, if Preview.app does propagates any such own setting (option/flag) at all here then, which can only be find out by an above mentioned inspection of it's common settings! - Since I run a very old MacOS version (El Capitan) and thus a pretty old version of Preview.app v.8.1 (877.7) , it won't show anything more modern implemented here for me, which might have been added in much more modern versions of Preview.app.

[laurent32]

This is the output.txt you get with macOS 13.2 (22D49) :

{
    "IKC_sort_ascending" = 0;
    "IKC_sort_key" = creationDate;
    "IK_Camera_selectedTag" = 1000;
    "IK_CreateSingleDocument" = 0;
    "IK_DetectSeparateItemsScanMode" = 1;
    "IK_DocFeederEvenPageOrientation" = 1;
    "IK_DocFeederOddPageOrientation" = 1;
    "IK_DocumentKind_-1" = 2;
    "IK_DocumentKind_0" = 2;
    "IK_FileFormatTag" = 0;
    "IK_FlatbedOrientation" = 1;
    "IK_MeasurementUnit" = 1;
    "IK_ScanBitDepth" = 8;
    "IK_ScanResolution" = 300;
    "IK_ScannerDocumentType" = 1;
    "IK_Scanner_downloadURL" = "/var/folders/7r/4yr4_t7n7kd0rnf72_x3z8mm0000gn/T/com.apple.Preview/PreviewTemp-aVyGwX/ScanResultsTemp_94EEC151-6DB4-4533-B8EF-6C8710CC4BCC";
    "IK_Scanner_selectedTag" = 1000;
    "IK_UseCustomScanSize" = 1;
    "IK_documentName" = "Image num\\U00e9ris\\U00e9e";
    "IK_prefsVersion" = "10.112";
    "IK_scannerDisplayMode" = 1;
    "IK_selectedFunctionalUnitType" = 0;
    NSDocumentSuppressTempVersionStoreWarning = 0;
    NSNavLastRootDirectory = "~/Desktop";
    NSNavLastUserSetHideExtensionButtonState = 0;
    NSNavPanelExpandedSizeForOpenMode = "{799, 448}";
    NSNavPanelExpandedSizeForSaveMode = "{897, 936}";
    NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode = 1;
    "NSSplitView Subview Frames NSColorPanelSplitView" =     (
        "0.000000, 0.000000, 224.000000, 258.000000, NO, NO",
        "0.000000, 259.000000, 224.000000, 48.000000, NO, NO"
    );
    "NSSplitView Subview Frames PVInspectorImageMetaDataGPSSplitViewPosition" =     (
        "0.000000, 0.000000, 604.000000, 361.000000, NO, NO",
        "0.000000, 362.000000, 604.000000, 361.000000, NO, NO"
    );
    "NSTableView Columns v2 cameraAutoSave" = {length = 1340, bytes = 0x62706c69 73743030 d4010203 04050607 ... 00000000 0000038c };
    "NSTableView Sort Ordering v2 cameraAutoSave" = {length = 391, bytes = 0x62706c69 73743030 d4010203 04050607 ... 00000000 00000115 };
    "NSTableView Supports v2 cameraAutoSave" = 1;
    "NSToolbar Configuration CommonToolbar_v5.1" =     {
        "TB Display Mode" = 2;
        "TB Icon Size Mode" = 1;
        "TB Is Shown" = 1;
        "TB Size Mode" = 1;
    };
    "NSToolbar Configuration com.apple.NSColorPanel" =     {
        "TB Is Shown" = 1;
    };
    "NSWindow Frame NSColorPanel" = "0 110 224 278 0 0 2560 1415 ";
    "NSWindow Frame NSNavPanelAutosaveName" = "520 220 897 780 0 0 2560 1415 ";
    "NSWindow Frame NSSpellCheckerSubstitutionsPanel2" = "691 407 548 137 0 0 2560 1415 ";
    "NSWindow Frame PVImageCorrection" = "628 476 321 540 0 0 2560 1417 ";
    "NSWindow Frame PVInspectorPanel" = "1052 502 370 359 0 0 2560 1415 ";
    "NSWindow Frame PVPreferences" = "1037 795 475 88 0 0 2560 1417 ";
    PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint2 = 1;
    "PVAnnotationInteriorColor_0" = {length = 55, bytes = 0x040b7374 7265616d 74797065 6481e803 ... 03840266 66000086 };
    PVContactSheetThumbnailSize = 120;
    PVGeneralSelectedPane = 0;
    PVImageSizeResolutionUnit = 10;
    PVImageSizeSizeUnit = 5;
    "PVInspectorPanelForDoctype_ImageDocument" = PVInspectorImageFileInfo;
    "PVInspectorPanelForDoctype_NoDocument" = PVInspectorNoDocument;
    "PVInspectorPanelForDoctype_PDFDocument" = PVInspectorPDFFileInfo;
    PVInspectorTabForMetaData = "{General}";
    PVInspectorWindowOpenOnStart = 0;
    PVPDFLastSidebarWidth = 200;
    PVPDFSearchResultsOrder2 = 1;
    PVScannerDeviceViewLastViewMode = 1;
    PVSidebarViewModeForNewDocuments = 1;
    PVUseExactPhraseSearch = 1;
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.arrowHeadStyle" = 2;
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.brushStyle" = 0;
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.fillColor" = {length = 242, bytes = 0x62706c69 73743030 d4010203 04050607 ... 00000000 000000b8 };
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.font" = {length = 501, bytes = 0x62706c69 73743030 d4010203 04050607 ... 00000000 0000017f };
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.hasShadow" = 0;
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.highlightStyle" = 765200;
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.strokeColor" = {length = 254, bytes = 0x62706c69 73743030 d4010203 04050607 ... 00000000 000000c2 };
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.strokeIsDashed" = 0;
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.strokeWidth" = 4;
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.textAttributes" = {length = 292, bytes = 0x7b5c7274 66315c61 6e73695c 616e7369 ... 205c6366 3220617d };
    "com.apple.AnnotationKit.userDefaultsVersion" = 1;
    "com.apple.imagekit.cameraviewmode" = 0;
    "com.apple.imagekit.lastresolution" = 72;
    "com.apple.imagekit.lastselectedfiletype" = "public.jpeg";
    kPVInspectorPDFMetricsUnit = 4;
    selectedDPI = 300;
    selectedUnit = 0;
}
 

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, laurent32 said:

This is the output.txt you get with macOS 13.2 (22D49)

AFAI can see, it doesn't look like Preview.app has some own toggable prefs settings therefor, as some other by MacOS included standard apps have.

[BugsJane]

Something clicked as I was reading all of your posts.

I solved the problem!  I typed an alphabet letter to the left of the number and then changed the black letter to white. It disguised the number! Yay!

In fact, I can put a single column of white letters to the left of the numbers all the way down the page and it takes away the "phone number identity" of those numbers.

Thanks to all of you for your persistence and attention to this problem.

[walt.farrell]

21 minutes ago, BugsJane said:

I solved the problem!  I typed an alphabet letter to the left of the number and then changed the black letter to white. It disguised the number! Yay!

In fact, I can put a single column of white letters to the left of the numbers all the way down the page and it takes away the "phone number identity" of those numbers.

But you started out saying the problem is with users copying the numbers. Won't having that letter there cause issues, too. For example, accidentally copying it?

[BugsJane]

Thanks for the question, Walt.

It is now easier to copy the number without the pop-up telephone number interfering. 

The other good news is that even if the white letter in front of the black numbers is copied, the website, findagrave, recognizes only the black numbers. 

That works even with shorter numbers of which some had the same problem.

It now works to find the memorial of the deceased person. Hurray!

For now this seems to be the best solution short of placing hyperlinks.

I will keep exploring alternatives.

Later edit: I broke down and started using hyperlinks. I just discovered that color-coding for generations can be used with them. Well, I keep learning and enjoy the fun of problem solving and discovering what I didn't know. This program is more powerful than the previous one I was using.