pre - TLDR:
Illustrator no longer preserves the visual reading order when copying fragmented text from PDFs without editing capabilities, instead using an incorrect internal sequence.

Incorrect text order when copying text from PDFs without Illustrator editing capabilities

MacBookPr 2024 - macOS Tahoe 26.3
Adobe Illustrator 2026 - 30.3

Hello,

I would like to report an issue in Adobe Illustrator that seems to have been introduced in recent updates.

Initial situation:
When opening a PDF that was not saved with Illustrator editing capabilities, it is expected that continuous text blocks are split into multiple individual segments or lines. This behavior is known and not the issue.

Previous behavior:
Until a few updates ago, it was possible to select such a fragmented text block, copy it, and paste it into a newly created text field. The text was inserted as a single line, but the content order was correct (top to bottom). The only required step was manually restoring line breaks or paragraphs.

Current behavior (issue):
Since recent updates, the order of the pasted text segments is no longer correct.
When copying and pasting a fragmented text block, Illustrator still merges everything into a single line, but the sequence of the content is incorrect.

Based on observation, Illustrator no longer follows the visual reading order (top to bottom). Instead, it appears to process segments in a reversed or otherwise incorrect internal order (e.g. partially bottom to top).

Impact:
This makes the pasted text unusable without extensive manual correction. It is no longer sufficient to reinsert line breaks. Instead, the content must be manually reordered, which is error-prone and time-consuming. In many cases, it is faster to retype the text entirely.

Example:
A text block selected from top to bottom (starting with
“entalkoholisierter Chardonnay”
and ending with
“… Anbau”)

is pasted beginning with a lower segment such as
“*aus kontrolliert biologischem …”
followed by lines that originally appeared above it.
This indicates that the segments are no longer processed in visual reading order.

This issue did not occur in previous Illustrator versions using the same workflow.

best regards
marvin