Archive PDF/A-1 workflow
This workflow is engineered specifically for preparing documents for archiving, specifically where PDF/A-2 or PDF/A-3 conformance is not allowed.
This workflow is disabled by default because it is recommended you use Archive PDF/A 2 workflow for archiving. Since PDF/A-2 is based on a newer version of the PDF standard, more PDF features are allowed such as transparency, layers, embedded files, and a less restrictive internal file structure.
For these reasons, achieve fewer conversion errors and better conversion quality with the Archive PDF/A-2 workflow. Particularly, if you use the Conversion Service in a Docker container where document content rasterization is unavailable, use PDF/A-2 workflow instead to avoid visual differences, removed transparency, or other potential issues.
More information on PDF/A-2, read PDF/A-2 overview.
Supported file formats for Archive PDF/A-1 workflow
This workflow supports these file formats:
| Content type | File type |
|---|---|
| Document formats | PDF 1.x, PDF 2.0, PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3 |
| Image formats | JPEG, JPEG200, TIFF, BMP, GIF, JBIG2, PNG, HEIC, HEIF, WebP |
| EML, MSG (without encryption) | |
| Word | DOC, DOT, DOCX, DOCM, DOTX, DOTM, RTF, XML (WordprocessingML 2003) |
| Excel | XLS, XLT, XLSX, XLSM, XLTX, XLTM, XML (SpreadsheetML 2003) |
| PowerPoint | PPT, PPS, PPTX, PPTM, PPSX, PPSM |
| OpenOffice | ODT, ODS, ODP |
| Other | CSV, HTML, HTM (prepared for archiving), TXT, XML, ZIP (without password protection) |
PDF conversion of OpenDocument Format depends on the rendering in Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint. In particular, visual differences may occur with tables and tabs. The visual differences caused by the rendering of shapes are usually not acceptable.
HTML documents need to be self-contained (layout information and images are either inline or available on the web) and suited for portrait page layout. JavaScript content is disabled during processing.
Layout information and images need to be available on the web.
The conversion of most file formats is enabled by default in the profile's Convert Mode Configuration for Child Documents (Attachments).
Features and limitations
Compared to the PDF/A-2 workflow, this workflow has the following features and limitations:
Convert to PDF/A-1
Collect mode configuration
The PDF/A-1 standard does not allow embedded files. Therefore, the only collect mode configuration available is Merge.
Document content rasterization
Certain graphical features of PDF documents are not allowed in PDF/A-1; for example, transparency. The removal of these features can lead to severe visual differences that may render the page's content unreadable.
The Windows version of the product can preserve the visual appearance of such documents by converting the pages' content to images (content rasterization).When doing so, a content rasterized warning is generated. If possible, content rasterization preserves the pages' extractable text, links, outlines and viewer preferences.
The Docker version cannot rasterize pages. Therefore, the conversion of such files leads to transparency removed or visual differences warning depending on whether the visual differences are caused by the removal of transparency.
PDF/A-1 specific conversion warnings
The following warnings occur more frequently when converting to PDF/A-1:
- Annotation removed
- Content rasterized
- Layers removed
- Transparency removed
- Visual differences
So the profile's conversion settings for these warnings is particularly important.
Note: Content rasterized warning appears only in Windows where content rasterization is available; Transparency removed warning only appears in Docker image, where content rasterizaiton is not available.
Sign
Document signing is currently not implemented.
Job and document options for the PDF/A-1 workflow
The PDF/A-1 workflow lets you use job and document options to pass job- and document-specific values to be used when processing documents using the workflow.
Job options
Job options apply to all documents processed in the same job. Any subsequent jobs processed with the workflow profile use the profile's default settings.
| Type | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Document compression and optimization | OPTIMIZE | Turn on or off document compression and optimization. All settings must be previously set up in the profile. If true, documents included in the job are compressed and optimized according to the optimization profile set in the profile settings. If false, no document optimization is performed. Documents can be optimized according to five profiles:
|
| OCR | OCR | Turn on and off optical character recognition for the job. All settings must be previously set up in the profile. If true, documents included in the job are processed to recognize any images as text (as appropriate). If false, no OCR is performed. |
| Metadata | META.AUTHOR | The author of the document |
| Metadata | META.TITLE | The title of the document |
| Metadata | META.SUBJECT | The subject of the document |
| Metadata | META.KEYWORDS | Keywords that apply to the document |
Apart from the standard metadata properties, you can also set extended metadata properties.
Document options
Document options apply only to a specific input. It allows you to determine specific properties based on an individual document, rather than as a global setting (either determined by the job or the profile). Any subsequent jobs processed with the workflow profile use the profile's default settings.
| Type | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Document property | DOC.PASSWORD | Set the password for the document. |