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I have been noticing a weird quirk lately in Preview - on Mojave 10.14.6 - when viewing PDFs with logical page numbers (those that start with roman numerals and then switch to Arabic numbers). Preview recognizes that the file starts with logical page numbers but only in the left-hand thumbnail view and not in the title bar, meaning that using Go to Page (Option + Command + G) sends me to the wrong page (page 18 instead of 7, for example). I have tried Apple's official solution, which is to select the option to use logical page numbers in Preview's preferences, to no avail.

Page number in title bar does not match page number in thumbnail view in Preview.app

Does anyone know any solutions to this bug?

Thanks!

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I've tested the behaviour in Mountain Lion, and Go To Page does indeed work with logical pages. (For instance, I can type in 'ii' for a page with a Roman numeral section.) That doesn't work in Mojave.

It could be a bug, though it's possible that Apple changed the feature, so that PDFs with two page ranges using the same numbers can be navigated more effectively.

(The titlebar has always shown the total number of pages and the physical index of the current page.)

It would be worth submitting feedback to Apple on this.

Preview is 'not the best' PDF viewer and editor, and there are many others that do a much better job.

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  • Ah, thank you! What PDF viewers would you recommend? I'm only interested in viewing and highlighting certain passages, not editing.
    – UKstudent
    Commented Aug 9, 2020 at 19:37
  • Well, there's Adobe Reader, obvs. Foxit Reader is another -- not very "Mac-y", but really crisp display and lots of features. I'd stay away from Mac App Store cheap ones, as they'll just be Preview clones using Apple's PDFKit, which has 'some issues'. Cross-platform ones, particularly free ones with paid-for "pro" cousins, are best.
    – benwiggy
    Commented Aug 9, 2020 at 21:44
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I tested myself. On 10.13 (High Sierra), it's exactly like what the OP described. On 10.15, the problem has been fixed and working correctly.

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  • Thank you! I've also tested the issue on macOS 11.1 (Big Sur) and it's working correctly.
    – UKstudent
    Commented Dec 17, 2020 at 18:21

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