Add page numbers to a PDF

How to use it

1. Choose a PDF.
2. Pick the numbering style, where it sits on the page, the font size and which number to start from.
3. Press Apply and download the numbered PDF.

Printed folios and the reader’s page counter are different numbers

A PDF viewer always counts sheets from one. A document’s own numbering usually does not start there: covers, a title page, contents and a foreword sit in front, so page 1 of the text might be the seventh sheet in the file. Those two numbers disagreeing is ordinary in print and confusing on screen, which is why the starting number is adjustable rather than fixed at one.

The disagreement matters most when people have to refer to the document out loud or in writing. Court bundles, tender submissions and contract packs are routinely required to be paginated continuously across the whole assembly, precisely so that "turn to page 214" means one thing in a room where everyone holds a different printout or scrolls a different viewer. A number drawn onto the page is the only version everybody shares.

Number the document last

The numbers are drawn into the page content, which is what makes them travel. They print, they survive the document being scanned back in, and they stay correct in software that shows no page counter at all. It also makes them permanent: they do not recalculate, because nothing in the file knows they were ever page numbers rather than text near the bottom of the page.

So the order of operations matters. Merge the sections, remove the pages that are coming out, settle the sequence, and number after that. Doing it the other way round leaves a document reading 1, 2, 3, 3, 4 after a merge, or 1, 2, 5 after a deletion - and the "of N" total, which is the part that lets a reader notice a missing final sheet, will then be wrong on every page.

Questions