By Kavita Mistry 
If you work for a legal firm, the government, or in a healthcare setup, you know how important document preservation is. Many companies and institutions want long-term archiving of electronic documents for regulatory compliance and also serve as legal proof for audits, disputes, or even court cases.
PDF is the most popular format that many companies follow to preserve documents, as it offers numerous benefits in comparison with other formats. PDFs are universally compatible and can be opened and viewed on any device. In addition to this, they can also support multiple media, including video, links, and forms, and are also easy to share and ready to print. However, PDF comes with limitations, especially if you want to store your files for a long time.
Since standard PDFs rely on external files, links, and media, over time, if these refs are not available in the file, these can often fail to render, leading to data loss. Also, PDFs can be edited and tampered which often cannot be used as legal evidence and are not flexible for archival storage.
This is where the PDF/A format comes into play. Converting PDF to PDF/A allows you to protect a document’s layout, fonts, size, and formatting, and can remain reusable for decades and even comply with legal standards.
Whether you are a compliance officer at a legal firm, a financial manager at an IT company, or an individual looking to store your documents in PDF format, this guide will answer all the questions including the importance of PDFs, file compliance, different versions of PDF/A and the right tool for the PDF/A conversion and more. If you are ready, let’s begin.
Understanding PDF to PDF/A Conversion
PDF stands for Portable Document Format, and the “A” in PDF/A stands for archive. PDF/A is an ISO-standardized format of PDF designed for long-term archiving of electronic documents. The goal is to ensure long-term file accessibility and reproduction.
Unlike standard PDFs that change based on the viewer, PDF/A files are completely self-referencing and self-contained. This guarantees file stability and access regardless of future software changes and other technical changes.
Moreover, PDF/A complies with ISO standards with strict requirements to ensure the document looks the same even when opened in the future. This is one of the reasons PDF/A is the industry standard. Moreover, PDF/A has more advantages than other archiving formats.
Importance of PDF/A
Here are six reasons why PDF/A is important:
Compliance with Legal and Industry Standards
For your documents to meet archiving standards, ensure you convert them to PDF/A format. Governments, businesses, and legal institutions require PDF/A for their official records because it ensures they remain unchanged over time, maintaining their authenticity.
Since it is legal and standardized, many countries accept PDF/A files as a standard, including the ISO 19005 standard, recognized locally for long-term preservation and also for metadata retention. US National Archives and German TR-RESISCAN are required to store the documents in the PDF/A format to ensure legal validity.
PDF/A is Ideal for Long-Term Preservation of Documents
As noted earlier, PDF/A is designed for long-term archiving of electronic documents. This ensures that the files you create remain accessible and readable over time without losing the data and format. Since the PDF/A files don’t require any external sources to render, they can be stored and accessed for years, even for 100 years.
PDF/A Lets You Keep the Original Format
This is to say that, even after decades, the original formatting of your documents will stay exactly the same for long-term use. More importantly, they remain easily accessible and uniform across different devices.
It’s Ideal for Documents that Require a Digital Signature
PDF/A is an excellent option when dealing with documents that need digital signatures because it lets you embed electronic signatures. These digitally signed documents can be legally accessed for years.
PDF/A Facilitates Global Integration
With PDF/A, you can store information in any language. That means texts can be easily displayed on any device, including those in Cyrrilic, Arabic, and Japanese.
PDF/A Allows You to Reuse Content
PDF/A lets you preserve text, images, and metadata in a structured and accessible format. And because it helps retain the actual text, you can also use the content in those documents to copy-paste into other documents and applications.
Different PDF/A Versions and Their Applications
PDF/A has several possible variants, which are created by mixing different PDF/A standards and conformance levels. Below are 3 PDF/A versions, their features, and their applications:
1. PDF/A-1(ISO 19005-1:2005)
PDF/A-1 is based on PDF 1.4. The version focuses more on visual integrity and content preservation. It prohibits features that can hinder long-term preservation, making it ideal for archiving documents that must be visually accurate for long-term readability.
PDF/A-1 supports a and b conformance levels. Its applications include government records and legal documents.
2. PDF/A-2 (ISO 19005-2:2011)
This version is based on PDF 1.7. It’s suitable for documents requiring more flexibility while maintaining archival quality. This includes corporate documents, scientific papers, and digital book archives.
PDF/A-2 supports JPEG 2000 and JBIG2 compression for better image quality. Besides, it lets you compress attachments as long as the attachments in question are in PDF/A format.
3. PDF/A-3 (ISO 19005-3:2012)
This variant retains all the features of PDF/A-2. The only difference between the two versions is that PDF/A-3 allows embedding of any type of file as an attachment, including Excel and XML. Its applications include financial reports, electronic invoices, and business records.
4. PDF/A-4 (ISO 19005-4:2020)
PDF/A-4 is the latest version of the PDF/A standard. It simplifies compliance by eliminating multiple compliance levels. Its subtypes include PDF/A-4f and PDF/A-4e. The former supports embedded non-PDF/A files, while the latter supports rich media like 3D models. It’s applicable in engineering and CAD drawings, AI and machine-readable documents, and modern digital archives.
Final Word
There are several benefits you can reap from a PDF/A file, but the biggest advantage of using this format is long-term archiving, accessibility, and legal compliance for years. Moreover, PDF/A is the industry standard globally accepted as a legal way to store long-term documents.
If you are a business, you can use any reliable SDK platform tool, then choose the right PDF/ A format for your business based on your needs. This includes document longevity, accessibility, and whether you will need to embed other files.