How to Bates Number a PDF in Adobe Acrobat (and a Faster Way)

Adobe Acrobat Pro has had a Bates Numbering feature since 2008, and it's the default tool most paralegals reach for. It works — mostly. Here's the official sequence, the spots where it regularly goes sideways, and what to do when you're in front of a deadline and Acrobat decides to crash on a 400-page production.

The Acrobat Pro sequence

From Acrobat Pro DC or newer:

• Open Tools → Edit PDF → More → Bates Numbering → Add. (In older versions: Tools → Pages → Bates Numbering.)
• Click Add Files and select every PDF in your production. Drag to reorder — the order in the dialog is the order the numbering will be applied.
• Click OK to open the "Add Header and Footer" dialog. Pick the corner (typically bottom-right), font, and size. Hit Insert Bates Number in the box where you want the number to land.
• Set the prefix (your party initials), the number of digits (zero-padded — 6 or 7 is standard), and the start number. If you're continuing a numbering scheme from a prior production, this is where you set the starting offset.
• Hit OK. Acrobat applies the numbers and saves each PDF in place. Originals are overwritten unless you choose an output folder.

Where Acrobat falls over

Large productions

Acrobat's Bates feature loads every selected PDF into memory at once. On a typical 16GB workstation, productions over ~500 pages or ~2GB total file size start to slow down dramatically; over 1500 pages, Acrobat regularly crashes mid-pass. The official Adobe guidance is to batch in chunks, but that means manually tracking continuation numbering across batches.

Mixed file types

If your production includes images (TIFF, JPG), Word docs, Excel files, or videos, Acrobat needs them converted to PDF first. The built-in conversion is fine for Office files but mangles complex spreadsheets and chokes on multi-page TIFFs. Most paralegals end up running a separate pre-pass to flatten everything to PDF before Bates can run.

Restart from scratch on errors

If you need to change anything — the prefix, the start number, the placement — there's no edit-in-place. You have to Bates Numbering → Remove from every file, then run Add again with the new settings. With a 50-file production, that easily eats an hour.

Page-level confidentiality endorsements

Acrobat's Bates dialog only applies one stamp at a time. If you need both a Bates number on the bottom corner and "CONFIDENTIAL" on the top center, that's two passes, and they don't interact — you'll waste real estate or get overlap unless you eyeball the placement.

What to do if Acrobat isn't cutting it

For one-off productions

Stampify runs Bates numbering entirely in your browser via pdf-lib — drop the production into the tab, set the prefix, the digit width, the start number, and the corner, hit Stamp. The whole production gets numbered in one pass, no Acrobat license required, files never leave your device. See how it works on the homepage.

For exhibits + Bates in one pass

A single Stampify run can apply: (1) Bates numbers across every page of the production, (2) exhibit stamps on the first page of each document, and (3) a confidentiality endorsement on every page. In Acrobat, that's three separate passes with manual placement coordination. See Bates vs. Exhibit Stamping for why the distinction matters.

For batch numbering across multiple files

The hardest part of Bates numbering at scale isn't applying the stamp — it's keeping the sequence consistent across files. If file 1 ends at SMITH000147, file 2 needs to start at SMITH000148. Acrobat handles this if you select all files in one dialog; it's an error-prone manual track if you batch in chunks. Stampify computes the continuation automatically — drop in 50 files, one start number, and the tool handles the per-file offsets.

Bates numbering quick reference

• Format — PREFIX0000001 is the most common; some courts prefer PREFIX-0000001 with a hyphen.
• Digit width — pick a width that comfortably exceeds your expected total. 6 digits = up to 999,999 pages; 7 = up to 9.9M.
• Placement — bottom-right is the default; bottom- center works when you have a footer caption.
• Continuation — every supplemental production picks up where the prior one ended, never resets.