About page labels

To specify the page label that should apply to any group of pages, you use the PageLabel element. To remove page labels, you use the NoPageLabels element (see Removing page labels).

The parent element of the PageLabel element determines the range of pages to which it applies. For the scope of any PageLabel element (see Scope of page elements), the pages are numbered continuously, starting with 1 by default. Pages within a lower scope have their own independent numbering.

Note: You can specify PageLabel or NoPageLabels only once for any given scope.

This example shows a document with a preface and two chapters. The document as a whole uses a decimal numbering style, specified by the PageLabel element that is a child of the result. All source documents within this scope (Chapter1 and Chapter2) use this style. However, the preface overrides this to use lower Roman numbering (i, ii, iii...). The attributes are described further below.

Page labeling is optional. However, when assembling documents using the Assembler service, if any of the source documents have page labels, all pages in the result document will have them.

When page labels are not explicitly specified for a range of pages, the Assembler service uses this default behavior:

•	When assembling a PDF document from existing documents, explicit page labels in source documents are preserved. For example, a page labeled "Chap 2 - 3" in the source will have the same label in the result regardless of the ordinal page number.

•	Pages that have not been explicitly labeled are given a filler label that is the ordinal page number with no prefix.

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When adding new pages using an element such as TableOfContents or BlankPage, the new pages take the labeling scheme of the preceding pages in the result document, if any. If the new page is the first page in the assembly, it is given the filler page label (the ordinal page number), assuming that any other pages in the document contain page labels.

•	If it is important for your documents to have accurate page labels, it is highly recommended that you provide PageLabel elements for all pages because the default behavior may produce unintended results.

The Assembler service provides flexibility in specifying whether page labels from source documents should be preserved, added, or modified. This is done by setting the mode attribute of the PageLabel element, which has three possible values:

•	Define (the default) means that the other attributes of the PageLabel element are used to define the characteristics of the page labels for these pages.

•	Preserve means that existing page labels from source pages remain the same in the result. Labels are not changed regardless of the ordinal page number.

•	Continue means that the pages use the page label style from the previous page in the document. The pages are renumbered as they are assembled. If the previous page had no defined page label style, the current pages also have no defined page label style.

The remaining attributes of PageLabel apply only when mode is set to Define; otherwise, they are ignored.

The prefix attribute specifies the prefix, which is a string to be prepended to the page number. The string may contain built-in keys (see Built-in keys).

The format attribute specifies the style of the page number portion of the label:

•	None: No page numbers are included. Only the prefix (if defined) appears; otherwise, there is a blank page label.

The start attribute specifies the starting page number in the result document for the group of pages to which the PageLabel element applies. All other pages are numbered consecutively beginning with start. It can be a positive integer or the PageNumber built-in key. By default, the start page is 1.