happening again in v24.1 on macos. three pages of complaints, will somebody in adobe react to this?

Yes. If there's an option in Preferences then the program needs to actually use it, not ignore it completely. NOBODY want pts as a default unit other than the programmers.

This quirky unit preference issue along with the rulers are just ridiculous. I am in two threads and both are the simplest and most important user preference needs!!! Why can you not listen?????? When u open a doc, u want the measurements u want, not a different one that takes sometimes various clicks to take. I also want my rulers to show without having to click on them every time-a different thread going on just as long. Can you please fix these. This unit issue is unacceptable. And, I have the same problems discussed here with inches and pixels or points.. Thank u and hope we will see a result very soon!

2020 version Preferences - Units go back to "points".
Extremely annoying. Working with structural design files. When I have to open 20 files for an object, I always have to change the units back to mm. This is a major error of a very basic setting in my opinion.
I'm just saying, because I'm sure that no one will take any action in order to fix this.

I have been working with Units set to General: Centimeters, Stroke: Centimeters, Type: Points and Grid: every 1 cm, 5 subdivisions. Suddenly this morning all measurements are in Points. I cannot work with this. The ruler is in points: useless. I have reset preferences and restarted several times.

Mac OS 10.13.6, Illustrator 24.0.3

Dear Raj Nagi, this will not solve the problem.

Once units are changed in preferences they need to stay as preferred... (why is it a preference then ?)
Automatically switching back to points for some mysterious reason is pretty annoying.

Right-click on the ruler Bar. Select units. This will sort out your problem :)

Yes, this isn't great. It never used to be like this, and then Illustrator decided to change this behaviour. Surely the presets can have whatever they like in their document, but when you make a NEW one based on that preset, it should translate the internal document units to your preferences value, e.g.
Letter 612pt x 792 pt => open as new => Letter 8.5" x 11"
A4 841.89pt x 595.27pt (wtf?) => open as new => A4 210mm x 297mm

Depending on if you are setup as mm or inches.
PS. USA is the only metric hold-out for consumers - most of the industries have already switched or have accelerated their switch to metric after the Hubble Space Telescope metric/imperial disaster for NASA. LOL!

I am also frustrated with not being able to set my own personal unit preferences in AI. This absolutely used to work - both under CC and CS - not sure why the developers felt it had to change. It isn't as if CC is an open source/free package with no support. We all pay good money for this suite of applications and should expect basic functionality such as having our personal configuration preferences remain stable from document to document and session to session WITHOUT having to jump through hoops or using some "obscure trick" that someone stumbled upon that happened to work.

right-click on the ruler. Select units.

Very annoying and this is now happening in InDesign as well! Both Illustrator and InDesign used to be fine regarding these size preferences and you only had to set them once.
Please can Adobe fix this problem. Surely it can't be that hard?

Its every time I create a new document, and sometimes when I open other peoples work.
I only want to work in inches. Nothing else. Ever.
Don't get me wrong, I like MM, but my industry doesn't work in MM. It works in inches.

Set illustrator to the metrics you want. Close. Open illustrator. Create new file. Copy art from old file in new file fixes the problem for me.

This is happening again for me in v23.03.04. Please fix.

Why would you make documents default to pts? Has anyone EVER in the history of mankind had someone say "Hey Johnny, can you make me a graphic 432 pts by 597 pts?". Do they sell the points rulers at Office Depot now? just checking ;)

most annoying thing. Some documents I have open will be in inches (my preference as a product designer) and others will be in points. Even though when i open my preferences, it says general: inches. but surely, my transform tool stays in points. I can type my inch dimension with a " and it will convert it to points. so frustrating. this has been happening for years and finally i cannot take it anymore

Setting up a new document with inches in preferences then leaves transform in points. How do I change that?

... and yet here you are David wasting yet more time making your point

'surely pixels is the most common', maybe in your huge pond

It is MUCH less likely that many users will want to have multiple options for measurement units. Preferences should establish what a user generally want. So once a user has set Pixels to the unit of measurement that should be the default. Then if another unit is set for a document - that single document uses that unit and follow the document. I don't think Points is very commonly used at all. it should not be the default. surely pixels is the most common. It is so annoyingly wasteful of time that this many users have taken the time to make a comment. Consider that it might be 1% of people who take the time.

Absolutely fix this pt/vs inches issue. I'm dealing with it right now as a product designer. I can't get anything to work measurement wise. Also...Please work with apple so your software doesn't crash the OS every 10 minutes...both in AI and PSD.