Practical use cases
- Numbering a printed handout or report so people can reference "page 6" during a meeting or class.
- Continuing numbering across a document that was split into several files, using the starting number to pick up where the last one left off.
- Using the "Page N" format instead of a bare number for a document that will be cited by page, like a manuscript or legal filing.
- Numbering a document right after combining several files with Merge, since the merged file doesn't carry any numbering of its own.
How the position is calculated
Numbers are drawn in a fixed style — Helvetica, dark grey, a set size and margin from the edge — this isn't customizable in font or color today, only in position, starting number, and format. The genuinely useful part of the logic is how it handles orientation: the position you pick (like "bottom center") is calculated based on how the page actually looks when displayed, then translated into that page's own internal coordinate system, undoing its rotation. That means a number placed at "bottom center" lands at the visual bottom center even on a landscape or upside-down-scanned page, not at the bottom of the page's raw, unrotated dimensions.
Common problems
- Numbers overlap existing content: the tool uses a fixed margin from the edge; on pages with unusually small margins of their own, that fixed position can land close to existing text — there's no automatic collision detection.
- Numbering doesn't start where you expected: double-check the starting number field before clicking — it defaults to 1 and applies literally, so a value of 0 or a negative number will show up exactly as entered.
- The file won't load: "This file is password protected" or "This file appears to be corrupted or is not a valid PDF" appear instead of the page grid if the file can't be parsed.