Add Headers & Footers to PDF

Put text in the margin of every page — a title, a date, a confidentiality mark — or stamp a proper Bates sequence across a disclosure. Free in your browser — no sign-up, no watermarks.

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⚡ Instant — conversion starts the moment you add files. No sign-up, no watermarks. Why FileHugger

🔍 How your file is processed
Runs
In your browser on this page
Engine
pdf-lib restructures the document in your browser
Max input
512 MB per file
Your file
Processed in this browser tab — the file is not uploaded. Converted results are kept in this browser's local storage for up to two hours so their matching download page can show them; expired results are removed on the next site visit. Nothing is stored on our servers.
Good to know
Pages are copied as-is — text, links and quality are preserved.

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How to add headers, footers or Bates numbers

  1. Click Choose files (or drag & drop) and select one or more PDF files. You can also paste them from your file manager.
  2. Type what should appear in each of the six positions: left, centre and right, in both the header and the footer. Leave a box empty to put nothing there.
  3. Press Add them to every page. Processing runs with a live progress indicator.
  4. Open the download page to save your files individually or grab everything as a single ZIP.

Why add headers and footers?

A document that leaves your hands page by page needs to say what it is on every page. That is what headers and footers are for, and re-exporting from the original file is not an option when the original is somebody else’s. Bates numbering is the same operation with stricter rules: a prefix and a fixed-width, unbroken sequence, applied so that every page of a legal disclosure carries one identifier that can be cited unambiguously and cannot be confused with a page number.

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About the formats

What is a PDF file?

PDF is the universal document format: it locks layout, fonts and images so a file looks identical on every device and printer. Scans, invoices, forms, e-books and reports all travel as PDF. Because a PDF is a container rather than an image, turning its pages into JPG or PNG pictures — or bundling pictures into a PDF — are among the most common file tasks there are.

Every page has to say what it is

Documents rarely stay whole. Pages get printed and separated, photographed one at a time, pulled into an email or filed on their own. The margin is where a document says what it is on every one of them — a title, a date, a matter reference, a confidentiality mark — and it is a place you cannot reach once the file exists, because re-exporting means having the original, which is usually somebody else’s.

Six positions and two tokens

Left, centre and right, at the head and the foot. Anything you type goes on every page, and two tokens are filled in as it goes: {page} for the number of the page it lands on and {pages} for the total — so Page {page} of {pages} comes out as it should on all of them.

Bates numbering is a different thing

It looks like page numbering and is not. A page number describes a position and restarts with every document; a Bates number is an identifier for one specific page of one specific disclosure, and it must be unique, unbroken and citable years later. That means three rules: a prefix, a fixed number of digits, and a sequence that continues rather than resets.

The fixed width is the part that quietly matters. If page 998 is stamped ABC-998 and page 1000 is stamped ABC-1000, the numbers no longer sort, no longer align, and no longer look like the same series to anyone reading a citation. Padding to a set width — ABC-000998, ABC-001000 — is what keeps a disclosure referenceable, which is why the digit count is set once and applied to every page.

Where it goes and what it covers

The stamp sits in the margin, so on a document with generous margins it sits in white space; on one already printed to the edge it may land on content. Look at the first page before running a long document. The text is drawn onto the page and stays selectable, which is what lets a Bates number be copied out of the file rather than retyped.

Frequently asked questions

Is this Add Headers & Footers to PDF tool free?

Yes — completely free, with no sign-up, no watermarks and no daily quota. Processing happens in this browser, so the practical limit is the memory available on your device.

Can I process multiple PDF files at once?

Yes. Add as many files as you like — each one is processed in sequence with its own progress status, and you can download the results individually or all together as a ZIP archive.

Does editing re-compress my PDF or reduce its quality?

No. Pages are copied at the object level — text, fonts, images and vector content are carried over as-is, without re-rendering. The output keeps the same sharpness and searchable text as the original.

What is the difference between this and page numbers?

Page numbers restart with each document and describe a position. A Bates number is an identifier: it has a prefix, a fixed number of digits, and it keeps counting, so page 1 of the second file might be ABC-000248. It is what courts and discovery processes reference, which is why it must never restart or change width.

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