Numbering Documents in a PDF

October 27, 2008 2:45 PM

I have several Word and PDF documents that I want to combine into a single PDF using Adobe Acrobat Professional 8. Is it possible to label each document with a different number?

I don't want to use page numbers -- I'd like all of the pages in the first document to be labeled "1," all of the pages in the second document labeled "2" and so on. Each document within the PDF contains a different number of pages. I would also settle for the bookmark titles being printed on each page (like in a footer), but I can't figure out how to do that either.

Is this just an impossible task? Searching for answers online and simply playing with the program for about an hour has gotten me nowhere. The Adobe Help doesn't answer my question as far as I can tell, either.

posted by k8lin to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

It should work to go to Document>Add Headers & Footers. You should be able to select where on the document you'd like the header/footer to appear, then type in whatever text you'd like, and then choose a page range to which it would apply. I tried it on one of my own PDFs and it seemed to work.
posted by lbo at 3:09 PM on October 27, 2008

Or just add headers or footers (or a bottom-positioned watermark) on each individual PDF, then combine them into a later PDF. You’ll need the full Acrobat.
posted by joeclark at 3:28 PM on October 27, 2008

Response by poster: I failed to mention that this is a gigantic collection of documents - not all of them are PDFs. It's so large that using a non-automated method isn't feasible. Even a semi-automated method would work, though. Unfortunately, but lbo's method isn't foolproof (it keeps "overwriting" previous headers/footers and deleting them) and would take too long.
posted by k8lin at 6:06 PM on October 27, 2008

Then you’ll have to pay someone to do it for you.
posted by joeclark at 9:47 AM on October 28, 2008