Add Header and Footer to PDF

Select one PDF or several, type what should appear in the six boxes, three at the top and three at the bottom, and watch the preview change as you type. Press the button and you get a copy with your header and footer written onto the pages. The original file on your device is not changed.

This is a free way to add header and footer to PDF documents such as reports, contracts, theses, court bundles and handouts. Short codes like {page} and {date} fill themselves in on every page, so one set of settings covers a document of any length.

The header has three boxes: Left, Centre and Right. Text in Left starts at the left margin, Centre is centred on the page and Right ends at the right margin. Fill one, two or all three; an empty box simply adds nothing.

To add header to pdf pages, type the words you want, for example a company name on the left and a project code on the right. The text is placed a set distance from the top edge, which you control under Margins. All boxes share the same font, size and colour, so the header reads as one tidy line.

The footer works the same way at the bottom of the page. Most people use it for page numbers: type Page {page} of {pages} in the Centre box, or just {page}, and every page gets its own number.

When you add footer to pdf files you can mix numbers with words, such as a copyright line on the left and {page} on the right. If a page number is all you need, the Page Numbers tool is made for that single job and has its own number styles.

To add date to pdf pages, put {date} in any box, for example Printed on {date} in the right header box. All pages get the same date: the day you made the file, not the day the PDF was first created.

Under Date format you pick how it looks. Your style follows the date settings of your browser and device, and the other three buttons show their format as an example: 2026-10-23, 10/23/2026 and 23.10.2026. Add {time} next to it when the hour matters, for instance on a report that is printed several times a day.

The {file} token writes the name of the document onto its own pages. To add file name to pdf footer, put {file} in the left footer box and {page} in the right one. In a pile of printouts, every sheet then shows which file it came from.

The name is used exactly as it is on your device, without the .pdf ending. Rename the file before you select it if it is called something like scan_0042, because the tool writes the name as it finds it.

Bates numbering gives every page in a set of documents its own unique number, which is common in legal work, audits and insurance claims. Put {bates} in a box, usually the footer right, then open the extra options and set the prefix, the number of digits (1 to 12) and the start number.

With prefix ABC, 6 digits and start 1, pages read ABC000001, ABC000002 and so on. When you add bates numbering to pdf files in one batch, the count runs on from the last page of one file to the first page of the next, in the order the files are listed. Only pages that get a header or footer use up a number, so a cover page left blank does not take one.

For the next batch, set the start to the number after the last one you used, and the series continues without gaps.

Under Logo, press Add a PNG or JPG logo and choose the image. Then pick where it goes: Header, left; Header, centre; Header, right; Footer, left; or Footer, right. The Height slider sets its size from 4 to 30 mm, and the width follows so the logo keeps its shape.

To add logo to pdf header space and still have text there, put the logo on one side and your words in the other boxes, for example the logo on the left and a document title on the right. A PNG with a see-through background looks cleanest on coloured pages. Remove logo takes it off again.

The standard PDF fonts only cover Western letters. When a box contains letters they cannot write, such as Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Cyrillic or emoji, that text is drawn as a sharp picture at four times the size and placed in the same spot instead. It looks right on screen and in print.

The catch is that such a picture is not selectable text: it cannot be copied or searched, and screen readers do not read it. Text in Latin letters, including numbers and tokens, stays real text.

Under Pages, All puts the header and footer on every page. Odd and Even are useful for double-sided printing. Only these opens a box where you type a list such as 1-3, 5, 8-end; end means the last page, whatever its number.

Tick Leave the first page (cover) blank to keep a title page clean. Number the first page as changes where counting starts. Page numbers follow the real position in the file, so with the cover left blank the second page shows 2. To make it show 1, set the first number to 0.

Need different text on part of the document? Run the tool once with Only these set to the first pages, then select the downloaded file and run it again for the rest.

Margins sets how far the text sits from the edges: 3 to 40 mm from the top and bottom (10 mm by default) and 3 to 50 mm from the sides (15 mm). If the header lands on existing text, bring it closer to the edge with a smaller margin.

Line under the header and Line above the footer draw a thin rule across the page between the side margins. Mirror left and right on even pages swaps the left and right boxes, and the logo, on every even page, so the page number ends up on the outer edge of a printed book. The centre box stays where it is.

Positions are worked out from each page as it is shown. A landscape page, a page that was turned with a rotation setting and a page with a crop box all get the header at their visible top and the footer at their visible bottom.

A mix of A4, Letter and other sizes in one file is fine too. Each page uses its own width, so Right text always ends at the right margin and Centre text is centred on that page.

Sometimes you do not need a full header, only one line such as a case number, a class name or Copy for review. To add text to top of pdf pages, type it into one header box, leave the others empty and set the distance from the edge under Margins.

Because this tool repeats the same text on many pages, it is the quick choice for labels. For a single note in one spot, Edit PDF lets you click anywhere on a page and type, and Watermark PDF puts large text across the middle of the page.

You can add header and footer in pdf online free here, with no paid plan, no page limit and no watermark. There is nothing to install: the page loads, and your own browser does the work.

Free does not mean cut down. Logos, Bates numbers, page ranges, mirrored pages and several files at once are all part of the same page.

There is no account to create and no e-mail address to give. Getting a header and footer in pdf free of any watermark matters for documents you send on: the only new text on your pages is the text you typed.

Your settings are kept in the storage of your browser on this device, not in an account, so they come back the next time you open the page in the same browser.

This pdf header and footer online tool runs in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook, iPhone, iPad and Android. On a phone the boxes and the preview stack below each other; tap Select PDF files to pick a file from Files or your downloads.

Files with hundreds of pages take longer on older phones, because the device does all the work. For long documents a computer is quicker.

Select several PDFs, or press Add more to add files later. The same settings are used for every file, while {file}, {page} and {pages} follow each document. The list shows the page count of each file, and the preview shows the first one.

With more than one file the button reads Add to 3 PDFs, or however many there are. One finished file downloads as a PDF; more than one come together as pdfs-with-header-footer.zip. The X next to a file takes it off the list.

The header and footer are written into the file by your browser with pdf-lib, an open-source PDF library. Your PDFs are not uploaded to a server, and nothing is kept after you close the page.

The one exception is a password-protected PDF. When you type the password and press Unlock, that file is sent once to our server to remove the password, and the unlocked copy comes straight back. The finished download has no password; Protect PDF adds one again.

Headers and footers are added on top of the page. The tool does not shrink the page content, add extra margin or remove a header that is already printed on the pages. If old and new text overlap, change the margin, or cover the old header in Edit PDF first.

Each box holds one line, and all six boxes share one font, size and colour. Letters from other alphabets are added as a picture, so they are not selectable. The logo has five positions; the footer centre is not one of them.

Once saved, the header and footer are ordinary page content. To change them, start again from your original file rather than the copy that already has them.

Once you add header and footer to PDF pages, the file is ready to share. Compress PDF makes it smaller for e-mail, Protect PDF adds a password and Sign PDF places your signature on the last page.