Bates numbering email productions
Bates numbering — the sequential stamp like JONES-000142 on every page of a document production — exists so that parties, depositions and orders can cite an exact page without ambiguity. Litigation-support software does it for $100+ a seat; Acrobat does it manually, page ranges and all. For email productions specifically, the painful part is upstream: getting hundreds of messages into one correctly ordered PDF before stamping even starts.
This tool does the whole pipeline in one pass: parse the email files (.eml, .msg, .mbox), sort by sent date, merge into a single PDF, and stamp every page with your prefix and a zero-padded sequence (SMITH-000001 onward, six digits). The stamp sits in the bottom-right corner where reviewing attorneys expect it, clear of the document text.
The companion feature for productions is the integrity manifest: a final page listing each converted email and the SHA-256 hash of its PDF, generated at conversion time. Together, ordered Bates-stamped pages plus recorded hashes make a production that's both citable and tamper-evident — prepared entirely on your own machine.
Open the converter — free, no upload
Producing a Bates-stamped email set
- Gather the source files: .msg dragged from Outlook, .eml downloads, or a full .mbox export.
- Drop them in, enable "Merge into one PDF" and "Bates numbering", set your prefix (e.g. SMITH-) and starting number.
- Enable the SHA-256 manifest if the set may be challenged later.
- Convert — the merged, stamped, hashed PDF downloads in one file.
Questions
Can I continue numbering from a previous production?
Yes — set the starting number. If your last production ended at SMITH-000412, start this one at 413.
Does the stamp cover any text?
Stamps render in the bottom margin, outside the body area the converter itself lays out, so emails converted here never collide with their own stamps.
Is this a substitute for litigation-support software?
For email-only productions of moderate size, it covers the core: order, stamp, hash. Full EDRM workflows (privilege logs, redaction, load files) still belong to dedicated platforms.