A particular problem in dealing with page numbers in PDF documents is that they frequently don’t align to printed page numbers. This is often because cover pages or index pages are not included in the printed in the page numbers, but the PDF pages start at the first document. It “throws off” the PDF page numbers. Often this is also a problem in a court book.

There is an easy way to resolve this if you have a copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro (or similar software)

Click on All Tools then Organise Pagers

If you wish to “eliminate” the cover page from the page number, the best way to do this is to make the title page page “A”. You can, in fact, give it no number - but this tends to cause other problems in terms of selecting page ranges.

Click the title (pages) and then click “page labels”

Select “Begin new section…” and select style “A, B, C”. This will mean that the title pages will not have numerical page numbers (for example a single title page will just be “A”)

If you have subsequent pages you wish to number differently, for example index pages, select those particular pages (hold ctrl and select each page) then click “page labels” again

Now select “Begin new section” and make the style i, ii, iii etc. That means the PDF pages of the index will be pages in roman numerals. For example if someone viewing the PDF selects PDF page “10” those index pages will be skipped

As you can see, the “PDF Pages” now start on the actual hard copy pages. This is despite that this page is the 5th PDF page in the electronic file!