Bates numbering is a popular procedure for organizing documents that require proper identification. It is commonly used by businesses, medical, and legal outfits that deal with a high number of documents that would otherwise be misplaced without the bates numbers. For digital documents in PDF form, bates numbers are added to the header or footer sections of documents to help in the unique identification of pages. These numbers are often self-incrementing, which means each consecutive page automatically gets a larger number. Bates numbers can be used with other texts or objects on the document where they appear. In this article, I will tell you how to add bates numbering to PDF documents.

Part 1. Best PDF Bates Stamping Software
Part 2. How to Bates Stamp a PDF

Part 1The Program for Adding PDF Bates Numbering

When dealing with a large number of documents, inserting bates numbers should be one of those office tasks that are straightforward and easy to accomplish. Wondershare PDFelement (PDFelement for Mac) is one of the few applications that provide a simple and straightforward feature for bates numbering, enabling you to increase efficiency and productivity when dealing with documents.

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PDFelement is primarily a PDF editing application that lets users control every aspect of their PDF documents. It allows you to edit text, images and pages within PDF documents through different functions. It also allows users to convert other file formats into PDF documents and also includes the ability to add new pages or images to existing PDF documents. Further, PDFelement comes with an industry-leading OCR facility that allows you to edit and manipulate scanned documents.

Part 2How to Add Bates Numbers to PDF

Bates numbering with PDFelement is simple and straightforward. Follow the steps outlined below to add custom bates numbers to your PDF document. PDFelement also supports multiple versions of Windows and Mac including Mac OS X El Capitan and Windows 10.

Step 1. Upload a PDF to PDFelement

After downloading and installation, launch PDFelement on your computer. The Home window will prompt you to upload a PDF document onto the program. Click the "Open" button and select the PDF document you want to insert the bates numbers.

Step 2. Add Bates Number on PDF

Once the document loads up, navigate to the Page tab on the menu bar. Click the "Bates Numbering" option on the resulting sub-menu bar to reveal two other options, "New Bates Numbering" and "Remove Bates Numbering". In this case, click "New Bates Numbering".

Step 3. Customize Bates Number

The resulting properties box allows you to customize different aspects of bates numbering.

Bates Settings section allows you to add suffixes and prefixes to the bates numbers and to select the first number in the bates series.
Font section allows you to change the style, size, and color of the numbers. It also allows you to change the orientation and opacity of the bates numbers using the rotation and opacity options respectively.
Page Range section allows you to select a range of pages or choose to have even, odd, or a combination of even and odd pages with the bates numbers.
Position section allows you to select the position on the page you want the numbers to appear.

Step 4. Save Your PDF

Once you are satisfied with the settings on this window, click "OK" to insert the numbers. Save the edited document and don’t forget to change the filename when you save the document to distinguish it from older documents.

Modify the numbered document as you wish. PDFelement offers over a dozen different functions that can help you customize PDF documents. You can also use the "Remove Bates Numbering" option to remove bates numbers and start again.