Roman numeral page labels
Number the front matter i, ii, iii and let the body start at 1 — in the reader, not on the page.
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Drop your PDFs here
or pick them from your device
Your files are never transmitted. Nothing is uploaded.
Good to know
- Accepts
- Files at once
- One at a time
- Transmission
- None — nothing is uploaded.
Chain it
Run this tool and the next one back to back — nothing to download in between.
How to do it
- 1
Add your file
Add the document that has front matter — a thesis, a book, a report with a preface before the main text.
- 2
Set it up the way you want
Say where the roman numerals stop and where the body begins again at 1. That single boundary is the whole setting.
- 3
Download the result
Download the file. Your reader’s page box now shows iv and 1 where the document says iv and 1.
Questions about Roman numeral page labels
- This did not print anything on my pages.
- Correct, and it is deliberate. There are two different numbers in every PDF: the one printed on the paper and the one your reader shows in its page box. This tool sets the second. To print numbers onto the page itself, use Add page numbers — and a proper thesis usually needs both.
- Why does the reader’s number matter?
- Because when it is wrong, page 12 of the file is page iv of the document and every cross-reference is off by the length of the preface. A supervisor typing "see page 40" lands somewhere else entirely, and nobody can tell whose fault it is.
- Which numbering does a thesis need?
- The usual rule: title page and preface in roman numerals, main text starting again at arabic 1, appendices continuing from the body. Set that boundary here and print the matching numbers with the page-number tool, and the file behaves the way an examiner expects.