Archive PDF/A-3 workflow
The Archive PDF/A-3 workflow is engineered specifically for preparing documents for archiving. The features and processing steps are identical to the (Archive PDF/A 2).
However, the PDF/A-3 format allows additional features regarding embedded files. In particular, attachments that are not conforming to PDF/A. The unconverted original files are embedded as Source in the converted PDF. This allows for more flexibility, preserving the original file while still ensuring the document is archive-ready.
The Archive PDF/A-3 workflow supports these features:
- Conversion to PDF/A-3 format (PDF/A-3b, PDF/A-3u, and PDF/A-3a)
- Compression and optimization of PDF/A structure (optional)
- Office conversion (optional)
- Optical character recognition (optional)
- Digital signatures (optional)
The Conversion Service supports Basic (PDF/A-3b), Unicode (PDF/A-3u), and accessibility (PDF/A-3a) conformance levels. All conformance levels are incremental; the subsequent conformance level includes the requirements of the previous level and other additional requirements. For example, all level U (Unicode) PDF/A-3 documents are also valid level B (Basic) documents.
The Archive PDF/A-3 workflow automatically tries to converts to the highest conformance level for PDF/A-3 (usually, PDF/A-3a). If the input document is PDF/A-3b or a PDF without structure information, it tries to converts the document to PDF/A-3u. If it is unable to convert to this level, it converts to PDF/A-3b or ends in failure.
Supported file formats for Archive PDF/A-3 workflow
The 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 Convert mode.
Configuring the workflow
The workflow's profile offers a fine-grained configuration of how files are converted.
Convert mode configuration for child documents (Attachments)
This extends the Convert mode of the PDF/A-2 workflow with PDF/A-3 features. Specifically, the PDF/A-3 standard allows to embed child documents As Is, i.e. without converting them to PDF/A. For example, by default Office files are converted to PDF/A-3, images are used as-is, and executables are removed.
Collect mode configuration
This is the same as the Collect mode of the PDF/A-2 workflow. However, in the PDF/A-3 workflow, it is common to choose the As Is Convert mode for some child document types. Therefore, the use of the Merge collect mode is strongly discouraged, because it is limited to PDF documents (see Collect modes). Instead, the Collection or Single Document and Attach collect modes are recommended. Please refer to the documentation panel of the Conversion Service Configurator for a detailed description of the available collect modes.
Attach Source Document
The source document (original document) can be attached. The configuration allows for each file type to decide if the source document should be attached or not. By default, the source documents for Office files are attached. Note that this may increase the file size of the result substantially.
Attach Conversion Report
All events of a conversion can be written to a report file and attached to the result document.
Job and document options for the PDF/A-3 workflow
The PDF/A-3 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. |