Convert your PDF to the archival-standard PDF/A format for long-term preservation
PDF/A embeds all fonts and metadata for ISO-compliant long-term archiving. Text-based PDFs produce the best results.
Drop your PDF here
PDF files only • Max 50 MB
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PDF/A Created!
Long-Term Archiving
ISO 19005 standard for document preservation
Fonts Embedded
All fonts included so the document looks identical everywhere
Rich Metadata
XMP metadata written for full compliance
3 Conformance Levels
Choose PDF/A-1b, 2b, or 3b to match your requirement
Convert a regular PDF into PDF/A format — the ISO-standardized archival version of PDF designed for long-term preservation and compliance requirements.
How It Works
How Convert PDF to PDF/A Works
The source PDF's text is extracted page-by-page using smalot/pdfparser, since PDF/A conformance requires rebuilding the document with self-contained fonts and metadata rather than simply relabeling the original file.
That extracted text is reassembled into a structured HTML document — preserving page breaks and using simple heuristics to keep all-caps section titles styled as headings — which is then rendered by mPDF with PDF/A mode explicitly enabled, targeting your chosen conformance level (1-B, 2-B, or 3-B).
mPDF embeds all necessary fonts and metadata directly into the output file to satisfy PDF/A's self-containment requirements, producing a document with the title, author, and subject fields set for archival record-keeping.
Worked Example
See It In Action
A regular text-based PDF report submitted for a records-retention system that requires PDF/A-1B conformance can be converted here to produce a compliant archival version with embedded fonts, ready to pass automated PDF/A validation checks.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Which PDF/A version should I choose?
PDF/A-1B is the most widely required and compatible baseline conformance level. PDF/A-2B and 3B add support for newer PDF features (like transparency); check your specific compliance requirement if one is dictated to you.
Will this work on scanned PDFs?
This conversion path is text-based — it extracts and rebuilds embedded text, so scanned image-only PDFs won't retain readable content this way. Run OCR PDF first if you need extractable text from a scan.
Does converting to PDF/A change how my document looks?
Because the document is rebuilt from extracted text rather than copied as-is, layout is simplified to standard paragraphs with headings — exact original formatting, multi-column layouts, and embedded images are not preserved through this conversion.
