Create a PDF from MS Word

Guidelines for Creating Archival Quality PDF
Files
Carol Chou
version 1.1, June 2006
supercedes version 1.0, May 2006
This document provides guidelines for creating preservation-quality PDF
files. It is based in part on the PDF/A-1 specification, ISO 19005-1. It is
strongly recommended that PDF documents submitted to the Florida
Digital Archive conform to at least the PDF/A-1b standard.
© Copyright 2006 by the Florida Center for Library Automation
This document provides general guidelines for creating PDF documents
that are optimized for long-term digital preservation. The guideline is
based in part on the PDF/A-1 specification, ISO 19005-1 [ISO 19005-1]. It
is strongly recommended that PDF documents submitted to the Florida
Digital Archive conform to at least the PDF/A-1b standard.
The most recent version of Adobe Acrobat Professional, version 7.0.7
(released on Feb 14, 2006), supports the official PDF/A-1b standard by
providing two configuration settings: PDF/A-1b:2005(RGB) and PDF/A-
1b:2005(CMYK). When using the built-in support in Acrobat Professional
7.0.7 to convert documents into PDF format, it is recommended that you
use one of these two PDF/A-1b standard settings without modification.
Tool Conversion Support Recommended PDF
Settings
Acrobat
Professional
MS Office, MS Project, MS Visio,
MS Publisher and Postscript to
PDF/A-1b
PDF/A-1b:2005(RGB) or
PDF/A-1b:2005(CMYK)
Acrobat Distiller Postscript to PDF/A-1b PDF/A-1b:2005(RGB) or
PDF/A-1b:2005(CMYK)
Adobe PDF Maker
plug-in Microsoft
Word
MS Word to PDF/A-1b PDF/A-1b:2005(RGB) or
PDF/A-1b:2005(CMYK)
Users of MS Word should use the PDF Maker plug-in for Word to create
PDF/A files from Word documents, rather than Acrobat Professional.
PDF/A-1b files converted from Word by Acrobat Professional lack the
required "ID" field in the trailer dictionary and thus will not pass
the PDF/A validation.
However the PDF/A file is created, users should use the preflight feature
available in Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0.7 to validate the file against
the PDF/A-1b standard and remove all non-conformances prior to
submission.
The following sections describe the PDF/A requirements to aid in
understanding the built-in PDF/A-1b settings during the PDF/A creation
process. Some of the sections also contain applicable suggestions for
configuring Adobe Acrobat PDF settings when it is required. Nevertheless,
this document is not intended to be served as the user manual for Adobe
Acrobat nor as a comprehensive how-to document for creating PDF/A
documents.
2
1. Color Space
The submitted documents must use only device-independent color spaces,
such as CalGray, CalRGB, Lab or ICCBased. Any ICCBased color space
must be embedded and conform to ICC specification. Alternatively, the
device independence may be achieved by using an uncalibrated color space
(such as, DeviceRGB or DeviceCMYK) which also contains an OuputIntent
to specify the color characteristics of the device that is intended for
rendering.
Suggestion: To ensure that all device-dependent color will be converted by
using either device-independent color space or in a device-independent
manner, it is recommended that the PDF/A-1b standard settings related to
colorspace to be used unaltered. However, if it is necessary to configure
the Adobe PDF settings, select one of the “Tag Everything for Color
Management,” “Convert All Colors to sRGB,” or “Convert Everything to
CMYK” options [Adobe]. Do not set the applicable working space for the
selected color management policy to “None”.
2. Compression
The submitted documents must use only lossless compression algorithms
which are not subject to intellectual property constraints. The use of LZW
compression is prohibited.
Suggestion: For compression on monochrome images, choose either “Off,”
“Run Length,” “CCITT Group 3” or “CCITT Group4” in Adobe Acrobat. For
color or grayscale images, choose either “Off,” “Zip,” “JPEG” or “automatic
(JPEG)” in the compression settings.
3. External References
For the purpose of long-term preservation, it is mandatory that the
submitted document is self-contained with no external dependencies.
Therefore, those PDF features allowing for external references must not be
used. These features include:
· Actions to launch external applications
· Actions to execute Java scripts. The use of Java script may create
external dependency and interfere with normal rendering of the
document.
· Actions to import form data from external files (ImportData action)
· Annotations to contain references to external files (FileAttachment
annotation)
Suggestion: When configuring Adobe PDF settings for creating PDF/A
documents in Acrobat, Distiller or PDF Maker, do not enable the “Add
bookmarks and links to Adobe PDF file” option. Doing so may transfer links
for external contents to the created PDF files.
3
4. Font
All fonts used in a document, including standard fonts, must be legally
embedded for unlimited, universal rendering. Font embedding ensures
that the submitted document will be rendered in the way it was originally
created. To reduce the size of the PDF file, the embedded fonts must also
be subsetted such that it contains only the required glyphs to render the
document.
Suggestion: In the Adobe PDF settings, select both the “Embed all fonts”
and “Subset embedded font when percent of characters used is less than
100%” options to embed and subset all the fonts used in the file. Do not
select the “Optimize for fast web view” option as it will cause Acrobat not
to embed the standard fonts in the created PDF file.
5. Form
To ensure consistent rendering on form fields, any action that could
potentially change the visual appearance of the form is prohibited.
Suggestions: Remove all form actions from a document prior to converting
it into the PDF format.
6. Images
Alternative images, allowing for variant representations of an image, must
not be used. The use of transparency feature in an image is also prohibited.
Instead, flattening multiple-layer images in the PDF file is recommended.
Image down sampling during the PDF creation process should be avoided,
as it could result in loss of quality. (Note this is not a formal PDF/A
requirement.)
7. Metadata
To uniformly describe the descriptive, administrative and technical
metadata, the PDF file must contain a Metadata stream that conforms to
the XMP specification. The following XMP metadata properties must be
provided in the PDF file:
Metadata XMP Property
Document
Title
dc:title
Document
Author
dc:creator
Subject dc:subject
Keywords pdf:keywords
Creator
Program
xmp:CreatorTool
Producer pdf:Producer
4
Creation Date xmp:CreateDate
Modification
Date
xmp:ModifyDate
File Identifier
either through the use of
xmp:Identifier,
xmpMM:DocumentID,
mpMM:VersionID, or
xmpMM:RenditionClass
File
Provenance
Information
xmpMM:History
Every XMP metadata property which has a corresponding entry in the
document information dictionary must be defined with the value equivalent
to the one in the document information dictionary. The XMP metadata
stream must also contain properties to indicate the PDF/A version and
conformance level of the document. Those properties must be specified
using the PDF/A Identification extension schema.
The description of all extension schemas used in the document must be
embedded. The descriptions must be specified following the PDF/A
extension schema description schema. In addition, the XMP metadata
stream must not be filtered.
Suggestion: Using a PDF/A conformed writer will embed a XMP metadata
stream according to the PDF/A standard. Do not use any PDF writer that is
not PDF/A conformed.
8. Multimedia
Embedding of multimedia content, including the use of Sound Annotation,
Sound Action, Movie Annotation and Movie Action, is prohibited.
Suggestion: Remove all multimedia content from a document prior to
converting it into the PDF format.
9. Security
The document must not be encrypted or password protected. Encryption
or password protection hinders the accessibility of the documents. Any
encrypted or password protected document would not be migrated in the
future.
Suggestion: When configuring Adobe PDF settings to create PDF
documents in Acrobat, Distiller or PDF Maker, please select “None” for the
“Adobe PDF Security” setting to avoid possible password protection in the
created PDF file.
5
10. PDF/A-1a Conformance
PDF/A-1a conformance includes the full set of PDF/A features. In addition
to the PDF/A-1b features, a document which is PDF/A-1a compliance must
also adhere to the following constraints:
· The use of tags to specify the logical structure of the document.
(Note, however, that tagging could significantly increase the size of
the PDF file.)
· The use of Unicode Character Map to map character codes into
Unicode values.
As Adobe currently does not support PDF/A-1a conformance level, the FDA
does not require submitted documents to conform with PDF/A-1a.
However, if the submitting institutions use a tool that supports PDF/A-1a,
creating PDF/A-1a conformed PDF files is strongly recommended.
References
[Adobe] "Create Adobe PDF Online," http://createpdf.adobe.com/cgifeeder.
pl/help_color?BP=&LOC=en_US
[Adobe 2004] “XMP Specification,” Adobe Systems Incorporated, January
2004, http://www.aiim.org/documents/standards/xmpspecification.pdf.
[ISO 19005-1] “Document management – Electronic document file format
for long-term preservation – Use of PDF 1.4 (PDF/A-1),” International
Organization for Standardization, 2004.
[ICC] “ICC.1: 1998-09, File Format for Color Profiles,” International Color
Consortium, http://www.color.org/ICC-1_1998-09.PDF.
[PDF Tools] “White Paper PDF/A – The Basics,” PDF Tools AG, February 7,
2006, http://www.pdf-tools.com/public/downloads/whitepapers/whitepaperpdfa.
pdf.
6