Page numbers in a PDF are off, how can I change them?

If you have Adobe Acrobat, this is really simple:

  1. Open the document,
  2. Select the thumbnails that you want to renumber (the first x pages)
  3. Right-click, number pages (or Advanced-> Document Processing-> Number Pages
  4. Adjust these settings, and click 'ok'

That should shift your start page, and add in you roman numeral pages.


You could always put the numbered content pages in a separate document where the page numbers matched. Then place any "un-numbered" pages in reference documents. So if the table of contents is in the first 17 pages place it in a T.O.C. document. Then have a content document where page 1 is the first page, then an index document where you could look up page numbers and find them correctly in the content. Splitting and merging PDF files is quite easy with PDF Split and Merge (imagine that)


Download (free) Pdf Architect, go to https://editor.cutepdf.com/edit.asp and put in the amout of pages that your reader is off in the beginning of the document. Do it so that your pages now have the right numbers. Let's say that my first page is page 13. I put in 12 blank pages at the beginning of the document.

Download your file now with the extra pages in the beginning of your document. Open the document in adobe reader. Press print. Select the pdf-Creator printer and select to print page from the first real page (that is not the extra blank page that you have put in). In my document that would be from page 13.

Now you press print and Pdf Architect will pop up, and you can save it. When you then open the saved file you will see, that the first page has another number, in my case 13, next page 14 and so on.