Dear users of veraPDF,

 

We are figuring out how to make good, future-proof PDF’s based on our day-to-day documents, which are mostly Word documents (DOC and DOCX). For the moment, we are using Word 2016 for Windows. Here, you can choose to save as a PDF/A (save as PDF > options > Conform with PDF/A). When I validate the resulting PDF using veraPDF with PDF/A flavor = auto-detect, it passes (hooray for Microsoft). Looking at the validation report, I see that it gets validated as a PDF/A-3A.

 

This is where it gets interesting. The test document was a simple text document – like most of the documents we create, maybe supplemented with some images. So, I would like to make my document in conformance with PDF/A-2A, as there should not be any embedded file in this simple PDF. In Word, there is no option to make your document in conformance with specific flavors.

When I validate the document with veraPDF with flavor PDF/A-2A, I only get 1 error:

 

Rule

Status

Specification: ISO 19005-2:2011, Clause: 6.6.4, Test number: 2

The value of pdfaid:part shall be the part number of ISO 19005 to which the file conforms.

Failed

1 occurrences

Show

 

So, I guess this means that my document says it isn’t a PDF/A-2A, but a PDF/A-3A instead. So, this seems to be a metadata issue.

My main question: can I safely ignore this message or change the metadata of my document to make it in conformance with PDF/A-2A?

 

I also went a step further to test this: I opened the PDF document in Notepad++ and I think I found the metadata part in question (using the veraPDF wiki as a guideline). There is this RDF part almost at the bottom that goes like this:

 

<pdfaid:part>3</pdfaid:part><pdfaid:conformance>A</pdfaid:conformance>

 

If you change the 3 in a 2 and save it, the document validates as a PDF/A-2A!!!

 

So mainly 2 questions:

  1. Is this safe?
  2. Is there a less dirty way to change the flavor of my PDF document in the metadata?

Thanks for any help.

You can find the files I used and the test results in attachment

 

Kind regards,

Stijn De Groof

 

Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium (KIK-IRPA)

Jubelpark 1, 1000 Brussel,

T: +32 2 73 96 779