How to Add Headers and Footers to a PDF?

Placing page numbers, copyright notices, or corporate branding across multiple document pages can be tedious if you lack the source files. The WeLovePDF Header & Footer utility overlays custom text structures directly onto your PDF pages inside your local browser memory sandbox. There is no need to upload your sensitive contracts or business templates to remote servers because all stamping operations are completed client-side. This guarantees 100% data confidentiality for sensitive files.

Step-by-Step Guide to Add Headers/Footers:

1. Upload Document: Click the "Select files" button above or drag and drop your PDF file directly into the workspace drop zone.
2. Add Text Labels: Input your custom text into the left, center, or right header and footer text input blocks.
3. Customize Layout: Adjust the sliders and dropdowns to select your font style (Helvetica, Times New Roman, Courier), font size, text color, and layout opacity.
4. Configure Margins: Set your top and bottom margin padding offsets (in points) to prevent the stamped text from overlapping with your original body content. We recommend setting a top/bottom margin padding of at least 36 points in the settings panel to prevent overlap.
5. Toggle Page Rules: Use dynamic tokens like {page} and {total} to enable auto-incrementing page numbers, and toggle "Different Odd & Even Pages" to place author names on left-hand pages and document titles on right-hand pages.
6. Compile PDF: Click "Run tool" to merge the header and footer overlays and save your finished PDF.

Real Tool Details & Stamping Capabilities:

Our stamping engine performs overlays directly onto the existing PDF canvas layers. This means that we do not delete, crop, or modify the underlying text and graphics. It adds text on top of what is already there. If you want to replace existing headers, we recommend setting a white background rectangle or cropping the margins first. Our engine handles pagination variables dynamically as it compiles the new PDF nodes. It supports dynamic text positioning using a nine-point layout grid layout helper. Stamped elements support customizable transparency, color palettes, and angle rotation settings to seamlessly match your brand guidelines.

While batch processing of multiple files is currently not supported for headers and footers to ensure exact visual alignment per file, you can customize single files of any page length. We use browser-native canvas drawing APIs to stamp text layers, which yields zero document layout shifts and keeps the output files compact. Need to crop or expand margins before adding header branding? Use our Crop PDF tool.