Adobe Acrobat - deleting pages without changing page numbers?

Is it possible to delete/extract pages in Acrobat without changing page numbers?

Right now after each deletion/extraction pages get automatically renumbered.

When the pages themselves aren't numbered and you only rely on the numbering in Acrobat, this behaviour represents a problem, since it prevents you from tracking real page numbers.

As an example, lets say we have a 10 page file, numbered from 1 to 10. I delete pages 1 to 3

Desired result: pages left are numbered 4 to 10

Current result: pages left are numbered 1 to 7

Shajirr

Posted 2016-05-11T08:32:30.337

Reputation: 89

Answers

I'm not very familiar with making edits in Acrobat, but I found the following. Toward the end of this page, there is instructions on doing so:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/manipulating-deleting-renumbering-pdf-pages.html

Renumber pages

The page numbers on the document pages do not always match the page numbers that appear below the page thumbnails and in the Page Navigation toolbar. Pages are numbered with integers, starting with page 1 for the first page of the document. Because some PDFs may contain front matter, such as a copyright page and table of contents, their body pages may not follow the numbering shown in the Page Navigation toolbar.

Note, this MAY only be labeling and not actual renumbering of pages (I.E. Changing 1 to i not changing 1 to 3).

Hope this helps.

Dandy

Posted 2016-05-11T08:32:30.337

Reputation: 342

Unfortunately this isn't helpful, as I already read everything on that page. This is just manual renumbering and doesn't solve my problem of wanting to prevent Acrobat from renumbering pages automatically when it isn't needed. – Shajirr – 2016-05-11T09:39:11.787

We have to differentiate between the logical page number and the labelled page number.

The labelled page number is just some text on the page, we readers interpret as page number. It can also be made active through the label of the page, although in this case, it may turn dynamic.

The logical page number is the zero-based number of the page in the document. The logical page numbers are always consecutive, and not tied to a specific page.

Now, if a document does get pages removed and added frequently, navigation can become a bit of an issue. Page numbers are no longer reliable, but instead of that, it would be better to use named destinations.

Max Wyss

Posted 2016-05-11T08:32:30.337

Reputation: 1 481

Acrobat does not always use logical page numbers. First of all, there is manual renumbering, so you can use whatever system you want. Plus, when you export pages to PDF from other programs, sometimes they leave original real page numbering, so you can have a document starting from page 5 for example if first 4 were deleted. However, as soon as you edit them in Acrobat, it overwrites everything, which is an undesired behavior. – Shajirr – 2016-05-12T06:20:34.997

Named destinations are way too complicated of a solution to a problem which wouldn't exist if there was just one checkbox labelled "keep original page numbers on page removal" – Shajirr – 2016-05-12T06:30:00.027

So, you have an idea for a feature request at Adobe… – Max Wyss – 2016-05-13T07:43:10.817