Bates Numbering for PDF

What a Bates Number Is, and What It Is Not

A Bates number is a label printed on every page of a set of documents. It is usually a short prefix and a running number, such as ABC-000001, and no two pages in the set share one. Wikipedia describes it this way:

The name comes from the Bates Automatic Numbering-Machine, a hand stamp that advanced its number after every impression. Today the stamping is done on the PDF itself.

A page number is not the same thing. A page number says where a page sits inside one document and starts again at 1 in the next one. A Bates number keeps counting across the whole set, so the first page of the second document carries the number after the last page of the first. An exhibit label such as Exhibit A names a document; a Bates number names a single page, so someone can point at exactly one page of a few thousand.

Who Uses Bates Numbers and Why

Wikipedia lists the legal, medical and business fields as the main users, and notes that in discovery a large number of documents may each need a unique identifier for every page so they can be referred to and found again. That covers paralegals and lawyers preparing a production, people without a law firm who must hand evidence to a court, and anyone in HR or compliance sending pages that others will cite by number.

The federal rule on producing documents does not mention Bates numbers. It asks for something close, labelling:

Numbering every page is one common way to label a set. The same rule opens with “unless otherwise stipulated or ordered by the court”, so what you must do depends on the order or agreement you work under, not on this page.

Bates Number Format: Prefix, Number and Digits

There is no standard format; the Wikipedia article says there is no standard method for numbering documents and no standard type face. So pick one the other side can read and sort. A prefix that names the case, the producing party or the batch, followed by a fixed-width number, is the usual shape.

Here the prefix is optional. It can hold A–Z, a–z, 0–9, spaces and - _ . / up to 20 characters (no accented letters), and the number after it has at least six digits. If a batch passes 999999, every number in it gets seven, so all numbers in one run have the same width. The start number can be any whole number from 1 to 9999999.

A character the standard PDF font cannot print, such as a Chinese character, is refused before anything starts, and the message names the character and its code.

How to Bates Number PDFs Here

1. Drop your PDFs, a folder or a ZIP of PDFs onto the box at the top of this page, or click Choose PDF files. Each file is counted when it is added.
2. Look at the list. The order shown is the numbering order. Drag a file, use its arrows, or click Sort by file name, which puts file2 before file10.
3. Type a prefix and, if this batch continues an earlier one, a start number. Every row shows the first and last number it will get.
4. Pick the output: One merged PDF, or One PDF per file (ZIP). The numbers run on across files either way, and the ZIP keeps each file name (two files with the same name become name.pdf and name (2).pdf). Tick “Page x of y” if you also want that in the middle of the footer.
5. Click Download numbered PDF. A progress bar shows how far it is; keep the tab open until the download starts.
6. Read the line that follows. It says which numbers were checked, for example “Checked: ABC000001 to ABC000507, 507 pages, no gaps, no repeats.”
7. Click Download number list (CSV) for one row per file with its pages and its first and last number. Any file that was left out has a row with the reason.
8. For the next batch, click Start the next batch at …. The prefix and your choices are remembered in this browser.

Keep the CSV with the production. It is the index that tells anyone which numbers belong to which file.

Where the Number Goes Without Covering the Page

The number sits in the bottom right corner of every page, as the page is displayed. Instead of printing it over whatever is already there, the tool shrinks each page’s content a few percent, keeping the top edge and the horizontal centre, and prints the number on the empty strip that opens up at the bottom. For A4 and US Letter pages the content ends up at about 94 to 96 percent of its size. Nothing on the page is covered, links move with the content, and the page itself keeps its size.

The number is real text, so a PDF reader can search for it and copy it. With “Page x of y” ticked, that line goes in grey in the middle of the footer.

The price is that printed pages are a little smaller than the originals. There is no white box behind the number, no confidentiality legend and no exhibit stamp.

Rotated, Landscape, Scanned and Protected PDFs

On Oct 21, 2026 we numbered synthetic test PDFs: portrait and landscape pages, pages rotated 90, 180 and 270 degrees, a page cropped smaller than its sheet, a page whose box does not start at the origin, and a scanned picture. We rendered and looked at every output page. Each number reads upright in the bottom right corner of the page as shown, below the content, and what the crop hides stays hidden.

Some PDFs cannot or should not be handled this way:

• Encrypted or restricted PDFs (a password to open them, or an owner password that limits editing) are listed but not numbered, with the reason in the number list. The rest are numbered. Open the file, print it to a new PDF (Save as PDF, or Microsoft Print to PDF) and add that copy.
• Damaged PDFs are skipped the same way.
• Digitally signed PDFs can be numbered, but numbering changes the file, so the signature will no longer be valid.
• One merged PDF drops the original files’ bookmarks, form fields and links that jump to another page. One PDF per file keeps them.

Check Your Production Before You Send It

A gap, a repeated number or a wrong page count is what the other side notices first. After numbering, the tool reads the numbers back from the finished file and compares every page with the number it should carry. If one is wrong there is no download, and the message names the page.

You can add checks of your own. In the number list, the last end number minus the first begin number plus one is the total page count. Search the numbered PDF for your prefix: every page should turn up. This checks pages, nothing more, so keep your original files.

Numbering Emails and Their Attachments

Emails have a harder problem: the attachments inside them are not pages until someone turns them into pages. The merge page puts .eml and .msg files into one PDF, oldest first, with each email’s PDF and image attachments right after it, and numbers all of it. That is part of the Case Pass and the Legal plan; see pricing.

If you drop emails together with PDFs here, the emails behave as on the merge page and the PDFs are listed below them. With a Case Pass or Legal plan one button numbers the emails by date and then the PDFs in list order, in a single run. Numbering the PDFs themselves never needs a plan.

Is It Private? Nothing Is Uploaded

Your PDFs are read and numbered inside this browser tab and are never uploaded; close the tab and they are gone. Two things are kept in this browser between visits: your prefix, start number and two choices, and, the first time you open a page, one small note about how you first arrived (the website you came from, as a host name only, any utm values in the link, the page you landed on and the date), which goes to us only with an order. This page loads no third-party analytics or scripts. It sends only an anonymous count of which offer was shown, with the page path, to our own server; your files and their names are never part of it.

Bates Numbering in Acrobat Pro and Other Software

Adobe Acrobat Pro has a Bates numbering command; Acrobat Standard does not. An Adobe employee answered a user in the Adobe Community in October 2025:

Users of Acrobat Pro have written about limits of their own: a community expert said in 2016, from experience, that more than about 500 files at a time was not likely to work, and another wrote in 2024 that they did not think its built-in features can skip exhibit cover pages. This tool numbers every page of every file in the list and has no page ranges either, so a cover page is numbered unless you leave its file out. We have not tested other desktop software, so we do not describe it.

For a longer comparison see Bates numbering without Acrobat. Related pages: Bates stamp PDF on where the stamp goes, and add Bates numbers to a PDF as a step-by-step checklist. If your files are emails, start at the EML to PDF page.