Getting the page numbers right the first time
Numbering a PDF is quick and almost impossible to undo, because the numbers become part of the pages rather than something a reader recalculates. That makes the order of operations the most important thing on this page: finish the document, then number it. After that, the settings are mostly about covers and where the count should start.
Which tool you need
A finished document that needs numbering
Add page numbers. Choose where on the page they sit, how far in from the edge, and what form they take.
A cover page that should not be numbered
Two ways, and they do different things. Say how many opening pages to skip and the counting begins after them, which is how a third page ends up reading 1. Or deselect the pages you want left alone, in which case the count runs on past them.
A chapter that has to continue from another document
Give it the number to begin at and everything counts up from there. Only a page that receives a number moves the count on, so skipping one leaves no gap in the sequence.
Front matter in Roman numerals
Choose i, ii, iii or I, II, III instead of 1, 2, 3. Run the tool twice on the same document if the front matter and the body need different styles, selecting different pages each time.
Pages that still need adding or removing
Do that first, in Organize PDF or Delete PDF pages. Numbers written now will be wrong the moment the page count changes, and there is no way to refresh them.
Why the numbers never update
Each number is written onto its page as ordinary content, not as a field a reader recalculates. That is what makes it look right in every reader and on paper, and it is also why adding or removing a page afterwards leaves the document saying something untrue.
So the rule is simple: number last. If the pages do change, number the document again once they are final — the tool does not find the numbers it wrote before, so work from the version without them.
What Page 1 of 10 counts
A number can stand alone or read as one of a total, and when it names a total you decide whether that counts every page in the file or only the pages being numbered. Those two differ the moment any page is skipped.
Pick by what the reader is being told. A total of every page answers how long the document is; a total of numbered pages answers how far through the numbered part they are. For a document with an unnumbered cover, the second is usually the one that reads correctly.
Pages that are sideways, cropped or already numbered
A number goes along the edge you would call the bottom, measured against the page as you see it, so a scanned landscape page is numbered the way it reads rather than the way it is stored. Where a page has had wide margins trimmed away, the number lands inside the part that still prints.
A page that already carries a printed number will show both. Nothing here finds or replaces an existing number, so choose a position or a distance from the edge that keeps out of its way.
What to know before you start
- Numbers are Latin or Devanagari, from a bundled font. A prefix or suffix using characters outside those scripts is refused rather than written as empty boxes.
- An existing number cannot be found, moved or replaced. What this tool does is add.
- Nothing is uploaded. The pages are measured and the numbers written in your browser, on this device.