Billions of PDF documents are generated every year. That’s right, billions. PDF files are the most popular way to distribute content on the Internet after HTML and XML. Many businesses and institutions rely heavily on PDF files to communicate with customers, prospects, employees, clients, constituents, and students – sending them forms, reports, account statements, articles, and a variety of other kinds of content. One very important reason for the popularity of the PDF format is that you can count on the content you provide in any PDF document you create to be preserved as you intended it. Let’s take a look at why PDF preservation matters.

Read "Getting to Know PDF/A" to learn more about PDF archiving.

Working with PDF Documents Today

The tremendous advantage of the PDF format is that the content remains stable and reliable. What you include in the PDF document you create always looks the same no matter what hardware, operating system, or software is used to view that document. The way the PDF document looks when opened won’t vary from one platform to another. PDF = consistency.

You can use Adobe Acrobat to make simple edits to content in a PDF document, and you can add comments, but tampering with a PDF document is not easy and PDF users can outflank Acrobat too. It is possible to add passwords to PDF document, and you can also add digital signatures to a PDF document where the person who signs the document can be identified and confirmed.  Further, after the PDF document is signed, the file can be locked.  Any attempt to change the content in a signed and locked PDF document generates an encryption record that can be used to show that someone tried to alter the file. You can be confident that the report or contract or essay or legal brief you created in Word and turned into a PDF file will display and print the same way as a PDF document regardless of the computer system or printer in use.

Reading PDF Documents in the Future

This security doesn’t only last until next week, either.  If someone needs to read that PDF document 40 years from now, you can preserve the content of the file indefinitely, especially if you render the file as a PDF Archive, or PDF/A, file. You might have an auditor or contractor who wants to look at a 30-year-old building design document to evaluate that design for a renovation or addition.  A scholar might want to look at newsletters or magazines created for musical societies 40 years ago, or a lawyer might need to consider contracts and transaction documents 30 years later to support legal arguments in a civil case.  The PDF document works today, and it will work for your grandchildren, too. Preserving your PDFs is a surefire way to future-proof those important documents for years and years to come, which is why it’s so important.