What is Bates numbering used for?

Sequential stamps that continue across a set of documents, so every page in a bundle has a unique reference. It is the standard for court filings and discovery.

On sale now — ₹2,499 a year →

The PDF work you
can't upload to a website.

Name: ARIA PDF
Price: 2499 INR
Availability: InStock
Author: ARIA

892 automated tests 341 against real documents 0 files uploaded

A client's settlement. A patient's file. A contract under NDA. ARIA PDF does twenty jobs on those documents — redact, compress, merge, edit, stamp — and every one runs on your own Windows machine.

Buy — ₹2,499 a year → Download the free trial

Prefer the Store? Get it from the Microsoft Store — Microsoft-verified, no security warning on install.

7 DAYS · 25 PAGES FREE NO ACCOUNT WINDOWS 10 & 11

ARIA PDF

The actual application. Type what you want to do — “email”, “court”, “hide names” — and it finds the tool.

Why this exists

Every free PDF site asks for the one thing
you cannot give it.

Your file. To merge two pages or black out an account number, the usual route is to hand a confidential document to a server you have never heard of, in a country you did not choose, under terms you did not read. For most people that is a nuisance. If you are bound by privilege, by HIPAA, by a client agreement or by the DPDP Act, it is a breach.

Advocates and law firms

Redact a witness name properly, Bates-number a discovery bundle so every page has a unique reference, and compare two drafts of an agreement page by page — without the file leaving chambers.

Chartered accountants

Batch a folder of scanned invoices down to a fraction of their size for filing, strip metadata before sharing a working paper, and lock a final statement so it can be read but not altered.

Clinics and hospitals

Remove patient identifiers from a record before it goes to a consultant or an insurer — the text deleted from the file, not hidden behind a black rectangle that copies straight back out.

Anyone with a scanner

A 300 DPI scan of a deed is often megabytes a page. ARIA PDF makes it dramatically smaller while keeping it sharp and searchable, so it actually fits an email or a portal upload limit.

The one that matters most

A black rectangle is not redaction.

The most common way to leak a document is to "redact" it by drawing a filled box over the words. The characters are still in the file. Anyone can select the area, copy it, and paste the text you thought you had removed. Scanned pages are worse: they carry an invisible OCR text layer underneath the image, and most tools never touch it.

The original 4 fields exposed

sale_deed_1981.pdf · as received

A sale deed showing the vendor's name Shri Ramesh Kulkarni,
his address, PAN AXTPK4821M, Aadhaar number and bank account
number, all clearly readable.

Name PAN Aadhaar Account no.

Everything a fraudster needs, in one page you were about to email.

After ARIA PDF Removed from the file

sale_deed_1981_redacted.pdf · safe to send

The same deed after ARIA PDF redaction: the name, PAN,
Aadhaar and account number have been deleted from the file
and the places they occupied are marked with black bars.

Not covered — deleted. Copy and paste the black bars and you get nothing, because the characters are no longer in the file.

Real output from ARIA PDF, same page, same crop. Every name and number shown is fictional.

How it works

Mark it once. It goes everywhere.

Type a name and every occurrence in the document is marked — not just the one you spotted. Or let it scan for PAN, Aadhaar and account numbers on its own.

Draw a box, find text, or auto-detect ID numbers
Print a reason in the margin — “REDACTED — S.126 Evidence Act”
Redact and verify — it checks the text is really gone
Your original file is never modified

A black box drawn over it ✕ still in the file

This Deed of Settlement is made between Anita R. Deshpande, resident of 14 Nehru Road, Belagavi, and the Second Party, in respect of account 3421 8890 0076 held at the said branch.

What copy-paste gives you — press the button —

ARIA PDF — Redact ✓ removed from the file

This Deed of Settlement is made between , resident of , and the Second Party, in respect of account held at the said branch.

What copy-paste gives you — press the button —

Nothing is sent anywhere — this runs in your browser.

Redaction cannot be undone. That is the point — and why it writes a new file and leaves your original exactly as it was.

Measured, not claimed

3.27 MB to 45 KB.
Still 300 DPI. Still searchable.

Drag the slider: one real deed, scanned at 300 DPI, before and after. Measured by the compression code itself, not estimated. Yours will differ; the trade-offs will not.

A 300 DPI scan of a deed with visible paper grain and speckle,
3.27 MB.

The same scan compressed by ARIA PDF to 45 KB, with the text
sharper and the paper noise gone.

3.27 MB scan 45 KB · 98.7% smaller

Drag to compare. The same page at the same zoom — the compressed side is 45 KB, still 300 DPI, still searchable, and the letters are cleaner because the paper grain went with the file size.

You decide, before it runs

It tells you the size first.

Pick a mode and ARIA PDF estimates the result on your file before you commit — no guessing, no running it three times to find out.

Extreme — smallest possible, colour becomes black and white
Automatic — bilevel for text pages, JPEG where there's colour
Balanced — keeps colour, grayscale at 150 DPI
Light — re-encode only, no visible change at all

ARIA PDF — Shrink

The Shrink tool showing four compression modes with estimated
results for the loaded file: Extreme about 100 KB and 97%
smaller, Automatic about 167 KB and 95% smaller, Balanced
about 1.31 MB and 60% smaller, Light about 2.45 MB and 25%
smaller.

The honest limit. Bilevel compression discards every shade of grey, so photographs, coloured seals, highlighter and blue-ink signatures lose that information permanently. This is exactly why the default Automatic mode inspects each page first and only uses bilevel where the page is text — everything with colour is compressed as JPEG instead. Extreme, Balanced and Light modes are there when you want to decide yourself.

Everything included

Twenty tools. One licence. No add-ons.

Grouped the way they are grouped in the application, so this page and the product agree with each other.

01 Secure

Redact

Remove names, numbers and whole regions so they cannot be recovered — including the invisible OCR layer under a scan that other tools leave behind.

Cannot be undone. Your original file is never changed.

02 Optimise

Shrink

A 300 DPI scan from 3.27 MB to 45 KB, still full resolution and still searchable. The file that would not fit the portal now fits twenty times over.

95–99% on scanned documents — the app shows you the estimate first.

03 Utility

Batch

Run any tool on this page across an entire folder — four hundred invoices redacted, shrunk or stamped while you do something else.

This is where the hours go.

04 Stamp

Bates numbering

Sequential stamps that continue across a whole set of documents, so every page in a bundle carries a unique reference. The standard for court filings and discovery.

Also included

Sixteen more, at no extra cost.

Kofax gates Bates numbering and advanced redaction behind a ₹20,299 tier. Every tool below is in the ₹2,499 licence — there is no upgrade, because there is nothing above it.

Secure

Password — set or remove one, and control printing and copying. AES-256.
Sanitise — strip author, edit history, hidden attachments and tracking data.

Edit

Edit text — correct a wrong name, figure or date. The old text is removed, not painted over.
Rewrite — edit the whole document as flowing text, then rebuild it. Page breaks will move.

Convert

To PDF — Word, text, HTML, images, EPUB and XPS, without needing Word installed.
From PDF — out as editable Word, Excel tables, plain text, HTML or images.
Images — pages out as PNG/JPEG, or photos and scans in.

Stamp

Watermark — text or a logo across pages. DRAFT, CERTIFIED COPY, a firm name.
Page numbers — numbers, headers and footers, with control over format and position.

Utility

Inspect — page count, size, whether it is a scan, whether it is searchable, what metadata it carries.

ARIA PDF — Batch

The Batch tool running Shrink over a folder called ‘Deeds —
Kulkarni matter’ containing sixteen PDFs. Eight are ticked as
done, one is highlighted as it processes, and the progress bar
reads ‘File 8 of 16, about 11s left’.

Where the hours go

One folder. Sixteen deeds. Eleven seconds left.

Every tool on this page runs across an entire folder. Point it at a matter, choose the operation, and go and do something else.

Any of the twenty tools, applied to every file
Progress and time remaining, file by file
Cancel at any point — finished files are already saved

What it costs

₹2,499 a year. Once.

The same jobs — redaction, compression, Bates numbering, merge and convert — priced by the people who normally sell them. Public list prices, checked on their own websites.

What you would otherwise pay	A year	How it is sold
ARIA PDF	₹2,499	One computer. Runs offline. No account.
Adobe Acrobat Pro	~₹26,000	Subscription, with a cancellation fee on the remaining term
Tungsten Power PDF Advanced	₹20,299	Perpetual. Bates numbering and advanced redaction are this tier only.
Tungsten Power PDF Standard	₹14,899	Perpetual, without those two tools

Bates numbering and true redaction are gated to Kofax/Tungsten's ₹20,299 tier. ARIA PDF includes both at ₹2,499 — about a tenth of Acrobat's yearly cost, and there is no upsell above it, because there is nothing above it.

Questions

The things people ask first.

Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?

No. Every tool runs on your own computer. There is no upload, no cloud queue and no account. The only time ARIA PDF contacts the internet is once, to activate your licence.

Does redaction actually remove the text?

Yes. The characters are deleted from the file, and the invisible OCR text layer under a scan goes with them. Drawing a black rectangle — which many tools call redaction — leaves the words underneath, where anyone can copy them straight back out.

How much smaller can it make a scanned PDF?

Two real examples, both at full 300 DPI and both still searchable: the deed scan in the slider above went from 3.27 MB to 45 KB, and a second measured document went from 1.78 MB to 0.018 MB. Pages with colour are handled differently so seals and signatures survive. Your files will differ; the table above shows the real trade-offs.

Do I need Microsoft Word installed?

No. Word, text, HTML, images, EPUB and XPS convert to PDF without Word or any other application installed.

Is there a free trial?

Yes — seven days and 25 pages, with every tool available. No card and no account are needed to start it.

Can I move the licence to another computer?

Yes, from inside the application. One licence covers one computer at a time, and you can release it yourself before replacing or reinstalling a machine.

What is Bates numbering for?

Sequential stamps that continue across a whole set of documents, so every page in a bundle carries a unique reference. It is the standard for court filings and discovery.

Is it a subscription?

No. You buy a fixed term — one, two or three years — as a single payment. Nothing auto-renews and no card is stored. When the term ends you decide whether to renew.

The PDF work you
can't upload to a website.