PDF to PDF/A

What PDF to PDF/A does

PDF to PDF/A performs a best-effort archival cleanup of a PDF — rebuilding its structure and setting clean metadata — but does not produce a certified ISO PDF/A file.

PDF/A is the archival flavour of PDF, designed so a document opens and looks identical decades from now. Real conformance is strict: every font used must be embedded, colour must be pinned down by a verified ICC profile, and encryption is forbidden entirely.

Two of those cannot be honestly guaranteed for an arbitrary uploaded file from inside a browser, so this tool does not claim the badge. What it genuinely does is worthwhile on its own: it re-serialises the document from scratch, which repairs a lot of malformed and inconsistent files, and writes clean explicit metadata. If you need a file that will actually pass a PDF/A validator, we would rather tell you to use a dedicated tool than sell you a sticker.

How to use PDF to PDF/A

1. 1

   Upload the PDF

   Drop in the document you want to prepare for archiving. Password-protected files are rejected — unlock them first.

2. 2

   Convert

   Click Convert for archival. The document is rebuilt and cleaned on your device.

3. 3

   Download

   The normalised PDF downloads immediately.

PDF to PDF/A: details and limits

• This is not a certified PDF/A-1B converter and the output is not guaranteed to pass a compliance validator. If a court, government body or records system requires genuine PDF/A, use a dedicated desktop tool or a print-to-PDF/A driver.

• What it does do reliably: rebuilds the file structure (which fixes many subtly broken PDFs), and sets clean creation and modification metadata.

• PDF/A forbids encryption, so protected files are handled rather than waved through. A PDF that only carries permission restrictions is decrypted and written out clean. One that needs a password to open is turned away — unlock it first.

• An existing creation date is kept; only a missing one is invented. Producer and Creator, though, are overwritten with BabaPDF, so the original producer string is lost — that is a real change to a file you may be archiving precisely for its provenance.

• True conformance additionally needs a verified embedded ICC colour profile and a guarantee that every font in use is embedded — neither can be established for an arbitrary file in a browser.

• Flatten PDF in "Everything to images" mode gets you closer to the practical goal of "looks the same forever", though it also loses selectable text.