How to create PDF/A Documents using the free PDF-Creator
Creating PDF documents is quite easy. For instance, Open Office is capable of exporting PDF while Adobe® Acrobate, which is a professional solution by Adobe® Systems, offers a wide range of additional features. One of the most powerful features is creation of PDF/A documents. This special format creates PDFs which is meant for long-term archiving.
However, there is a very useful free open-source tool called PDFCreator which is also capable of creating PDF/A documents. You only need to download PDFCreator and follow these instructions:
- Print any document from any application you like
- As the printer, choose PDFCreator
- Click on “O.K.” or “Print” or whatever
- A dialog pops up. Click on “Properties”
- To the left, click on “Program” (if not already chosen)
- Click on “Ghostscript” (which is actually the engine that creates PDFs)
- Copy and paste the following line into the upper text box (“Additional Ghostscript Parameters”):
-dPDFA|-f|<gslib> - Click on “Save” and again on “Save”
You are done. A PDF/A document is created. You may want to check this. If you have e.g. Adobe® Acrobate Reader installed, all you need to do is to open the just created PDF and have a look at small bar to the very left. You should see a small icon which reads “PDF” at its top left and shows the letter “i” at its bottom right. This indicates that there are additional information available. Click on that icon. You should see “Conformance. Standard: PDF/A-1B. ISO Name: ISO 19005-1″. If so, you document is actually a PDF/A one.
