If a cover page or table of contents already exists somewhere inside a PDF but is stuck in the wrong spot, that’s a reordering job — see How to Reorder and Delete PDF Pages. This is the other, more common case: the cover page doesn’t exist anywhere yet, and you need to create one and attach it to the front of a document that’s otherwise finished.
It’s a natural first instinct to look for an “add page” button on a page-arranging tool, but reordering and rotating tools work exclusively with the pages already inside a PDF — they can rearrange, remove, or turn existing content, but none of them can generate new content from nothing. Add Pages to PDF will insert a page at the front, but the page it inserts is blank (see how to add blank pages to a PDF) — useful for a spacer or a signature sheet, not for a titled cover. A cover page has content on it, so it has to be built as its own file first, then merged into place.
The workflow
Step 1: create the cover page as its own file. The fastest route depends on what’s on it. Mostly text — a title, a date, an author or client name, maybe a logo — build it as a one-page document in Word (or Google Docs), then convert with Word to PDF. A designed graphic, a scanned letterhead, or an image you already have converts directly with Image to PDF, which turns a JPG or PNG into a single-page PDF in seconds.
Step 2: merge it onto the front. Go to Merge PDF, add your new cover page file first and the original document second — merging preserves exactly the order you added them in, so the cover lands at the front without any extra reordering step.
Step 3: download. One PDF, cover page first, original content following, page numbers of the original document shifted by exactly one. Nothing about the original pages changes — every page after the new cover is copied across pixel for pixel, only its position in the sequence moves.
The same process builds a table of contents page, or any other front matter that doesn’t exist in the source document yet: create it as its own one- or multi-page file, then merge it in ahead of the main document. Build a table of contents last, once you know the final page order, so its page references are actually accurate.
If this is a recurring document type — a weekly report, a standard proposal template — build the cover page once and keep it as a reusable PDF. Every future version just needs the new content merged behind the same standing cover, rather than rebuilding it from scratch each time.
After the cover is attached
A few things worth doing once the cover is attached: rotate it if it came in a different orientation from the rest of the document, compress the combined file if the cover’s graphics pushed the size up noticeably, update the PDF’s title metadata to match the new cover (a merged file inherits its metadata from whichever file was added first), and add page numbers across the combined file if the cover shouldn’t count as page 1.
The actual merge happens with the free Merge PDF tool — no account, no watermark, files gone the moment you’ve downloaded them.