Change PDF Page Labels Without Renumbering the Printed Page Content
A reviewer who asks for page 1 may mean the first sheet in the file or the first numbered body page. Resolve that ambiguity before editing a PDF assembled from several sections. A useful handover should let two people identify the same page without guessing.
Use a practice copy with two preliminary pages followed by a body page. Make a small mapping sheet with three columns: physical position, navigation label and number visibly printed on the page.
Change the navigation label
In Acrobat desktop, choose All tools > Organize pages > Page labels. Specify the body-page range, choose Begin new section, select ordinary numeric numbering and start at 1. Confirm the change.
Physical page 3 can now carry navigation label 1. Page labels affect thumbnails and navigation; they do not replace a number printed in the page content. Record the visible folio exactly as it remains, even if it differs from the label.
Inspect the selected range's first and last pages and the boundary just before it. If the next section should continue an existing sequence, Page labels also offers an option to extend the preceding section's numbering instead of starting again.
Hand over an unambiguous reference
Choose a distinctive sentence or diagram on the first body page and record it alongside the three identifiers. Ask a reviewer to locate that content using the new reference. This checks whether the handover language is usable, rather than merely whether the label looks tidy.
When recording corrections, specify the identifier convention in the notes: for example, navigation label 1, physical page 3. Avoid changing the convention halfway through a review list.
If the printed folio is wrong, log that as a separate content correction with its own intended result. Accept the labeling task when the navigation sequence matches the agreed map and the reviewer can find the intended content without mistaking a label change for a page-content edit.
Sources: Adobe: page labels.