How do I make the ruler numbers show up. I thought they would by default and I must have done something and when I open inkscape there are no ruler numbers to judge distance and my drawings. How do I get them to show up again. Help Please. I have searched the manual and all I saw was that it was by default.

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

I can think of a couple of things that might have happened. One is that you inadvertently hid the rulers. Look in Edit menu > Show/Hide > Rulers and make sure there is a checkmark beside Rulers.

If that doesn't fix it, I'm thinking you might have set it to some large unit, so that only a few hashmarks and numbers can fit on the screen. For example, if I set mine to meters, there's only one mark and one number on the ruler, at 100% zoom. So open File menu > Document Properties > Page tab > General > Default units then choose px from the dropdown menu. px means pixels, and that's the default. Of course you can choose anything you want, now that you know where the setting is.

Another possibility is that you zoomed way, way in, which has a similar effect as having a large unit. In this case, you'd see a lot of hashmarks and fewer numbers. Even set for px units, I only have 5 or 6 numbers on the ruler, when I zoom in as far as Inkscape allows. I'm thinking this is probably what happened, based on your description. But of course I can only guess Anyway, there are a few ways to zoom. One is with the mouse, using the mouse wheel if it's a traditional style of mouse. You can quickly see the zoom level in the bottom right corner of the window, and you can change it there as well. And additionally, there is a Zoom tool. The absolute fastest way to get back to 100% is to press the 1 key once.

Let us know if you get it fixed