PDF to PDF/A

What is a PDF to PDF/A Converter?

As we go through life, we collect documents. Unfortunately, the documents you have won’t look that way forever. Ink fades, and paper tends to deteriorate rapidly over time. To keep your documents in excellent condition, you need to make digital copies of them. You can do a PDF convert, but if you want your document to look exactly the same over the next 50 years to 100 years and beyond, you need to convert them from PDF to PDF/A.

PDF/A is an ISO-standardized version of the PDF, or Portable Document Format, created especially to archive and preserve digital documents. In case you’re thinking that PDF/A is and PDF are one and the same, they're not. PDF/A is better at preserving documents. It differs from PDF because it prohibits features that don’t help in the preservation process, like font linking and encryption. If whatever is in the PDF document will not contribute to the preservation of the document, the PDF/A converter won’t accept it.

To illustrate further just how rigid and precise a PDF/A converter can be, do you know that it preserves even the metadata from the original document? Metadata is a description of the data. PDF converters often use it to further organize, find, and understand other data.

For example, a single blog post may contain standard metadata fields usually seen before the first paragraph of the said post. Some of these fields are title, author, published, category fields etc. Indeed, PDF/A conversion tools are one of the most advanced tools around, in fact, they are so advanced, they need to comply with ISO requirements in order to clearly operate, requirements like a user interface for reading embedded annotations, etc.

If you’re amazed at how all this works, we are, too. So amazed, we looked into it, we got the answers, and we’d be glad to share them with you! What we learned is that all PDF converters contain OCR or Optical Character Recognition Software. OCR is an amazing piece of software that recognizes text within a digital image, and turns scanned PDF files into editable and searchable files. In other words, it "breaks," the content in a PDF file, allowing you to search within the file, and edit within the file. Isn’t that amazing?

How To Use PDFBear’s PDF To PDF/A Converter?

Before file conversion sites like PDFBear were made, you’d normally need to purchase and implement a specific type of software to convert your files from PDF to PDF/A. Unfortunately, most of them are quite expensive, and take a while to install. What a hassle! But if you were to use PDFBear, your files would be converted in seconds! Plus, you don’t need to download any program at all, because the whole process takes place online!

PDFBear works like any other PDF to PDF/A converter, but better, easier, and faster. It only takes four simple steps to complete a PDF to PDF/A conversion, and you can do it at home, at the office, or on the road. PDFBear supports all types of operating systems and browsers - Windows, Mac, Unix-like, BSD- to name a few. And it’s very flexible, too! Access the site from your laptop, desktop, tablet, or phone, you won’t see any difference.

The people behind PDFBear are aware of how much a hassle it can be to overload your computer with photos and files, which is why it implemented a cloud system to let its users access their files easily. No more having to deal with files that eat up hard drive space, everything is created in the cloud, and saved in the cloud. Isn’t that great to know?

From top to bottom, inside and out, one this clear - PDFBear turns your PDF files to PDF/A documents in a most convenient way.

To illustrate it further, we’ve crafted a comprehensive guide to convert PDF to PDF/A easily:

1. Select your target PDF file or drag-and-drop it to the conversion area.
2. Wait for the file to be fully uploaded.
3. Wait for the conversion process to be completed.
4. Download your new PDF/A file and save it to your device.