Add Page Numbers to PDF

Skip the cover, and start where you need to

These two settings are what make the difference on a real document, and several free tools leave them out.

Skip first page is for anything with a cover or title page. A numbered title page looks wrong, and it is the most common reason someone has to redo this.

Starting number is for documents that are part of something bigger. If your section follows 46 pages of someone else's, start at 47 and the bundle reads continuously. It is also how you handle front matter that was numbered separately.

The two work together: skip the cover and start at 1, and numbering begins on page two with "1".

One quirk worth knowing about "of N"

If you choose a format with a total — "Page 1 of N" or "1 of N" — the total is the full page count of the document, and it does not shrink when you skip the first page.

So on a ten-page PDF with the cover skipped, page two reads "Page 1 of 10" and the last page reads "Page 9 of 10". The numbering is consistent with itself, but the total counts the cover that is not numbered. If that mismatch matters — a formal or legal document where the count has to be exact — use a format without a total, such as "Page 1" or "- 1 -", and the question does not arise.

Placement, and staying out of the way

Six positions and a margin in points, which is the pairing that matters, because the number is drawn on top of whatever is already on the page. Nothing checks whether that spot is empty.

So if the document already has a footer — a company name, a confidentiality line, a date, a page number from whatever produced it — a bottom-centre number at the default 20pt margin may land on it. Increase the margin to sit below the existing footer, or move to a corner the footer does not reach. Top positions are useful when the bottom of every page is already busy, which is common in reports and scanned forms.

There is no live preview here, so the position, size and margin are chosen blind. On anything important, run it once, open the result, and adjust if a number is sitting somewhere awkward. It is a quick loop, and nothing is destroyed — you still have the original.

Which format to choose

"Page 1 of N" is the default and right for reports and anything printed, because a reader can tell whether pages are missing. Plain "1" is the quiet option and the usual choice for books, manuscripts and anything typeset. "- 1 -" is a typesetting convention that reads as deliberate rather than automatic. "1 of N" is the compact version of the default, useful when the margin is tight.

The font is Helvetica at 6 to 36 points, defaulting to 12. Ten or eleven often looks better than twelve on a dense page; grey rather than black also helps a number stay out of the way while remaining legible.

A note on scanned documents

This works on scans as well as on digitally produced PDFs, because the number is drawn onto the page rather than inserted into a text flow. That makes it genuinely useful for a bundle of scanned pages that has to be citable — which is one of the more common real reasons to do this at all.

Related tools

Merge PDF combines documents first, which is the usual order: merge, then number the result so the numbering runs straight through. Crop PDF is worth a look if the margins are too tight to fit a number cleanly, and Compress PDF reduces the finished file.