How to Add Headers and Footers to a PDF

Adding a running header or footer to a PDF — a company name at the top, a confidentiality notice at the bottom — is fast with the right tool and genuinely tedious if you're trying to stamp it onto each page by hand.

When you'd want headers or footers

• Labeling every page of a report with a company or project name
• Adding a confidentiality or "internal use only" notice across a shared document
• Putting a document title at the top of every page for a long PDF that might get printed and separated
• Adding a footer note like a date, version, or contact line for something that'll circulate

How to add headers and footers step by step

1. Open Headers & Footers.
2. Drop in the PDF you want to label.
3. Type the text you want in the header field, footer field, or both.
4. Download the result — the text is stamped onto every page.

Tips for using it well

Keep it short. Header and footer text sits in a narrow strip at the top or bottom of the page — long lines are more likely to wrap awkwardly or crowd the page's actual content.

Combine with page numbers if you need both. This tool handles the text label; if you also want sequential page numbers, run the result through Add Page Numbers as a second pass.

For a large, prominent notice instead of a discreet label, use a watermark. A footer note is meant to be readable but unobtrusive — if you need something like "CONFIDENTIAL" stamped diagonally and impossible to miss, Add Watermark is the better fit.

Check the first and last pages. If your document has a cover page or a blank divider, decide whether you actually want the header/footer text there too, since it's applied uniformly across every page.

FAQ

Can I add different text to different pages? No — the header and footer text you set applies the same way to every page in the file. For page-specific labeling, this isn't the right tool.

Will this overlap with existing content near the top or bottom of my pages? It's possible if the original document already has content close to the page edges — check a page or two after downloading.

Can I remove headers or footers I've already added? Re-run the tool with the header and footer fields left blank, or start again from the original unlabeled PDF if you still have it.