Compelling Reasons to Use PDF Format When Distributing Documents

When you want to distribute a document and share it with others, it is a good idea to export it as a PDF. While other document formats are popular, such as DOC, none have the benefits that PDF offers.

Additionally, PDF is a format for document imaging. When you need to digitalize paper documents, you use document imaging to scan, process, store and retrieve them.

Like many software products, many of us just use them without knowing what features might be useful for our business. For example, did you know (according to Wikipedia) that a PDF file can be encrypted for security or digitally signed for authentication?

If you want to know why you should be using PDFs to distribute documents, here are a few compelling reasons that you should consider:

PDFs are universal and preserve formatting

Unlike other platform-specific formats, PDFs are universal and can be viewed on any device or platform with a simple and readily available PDF viewer. More importantly, however, the document’s formatting will also be preserved across platforms.

In other words, when you distribute documents in PDF, you don’t have to worry about the formatting and whether or not it will remain the same. In fact, your recipients will see a document that looks exactly how it appears on your screen.

PDFs are secure

Few document formats are as secure as PDFs, not just because they can use passwords. PDFs cannot be edited without leaving a trace, which is why they are considered to be legally accepted documents.

Due to how secure PDFs are, you can rest assured that your documents will remain unaltered while being distributed. Furthermore, if altered, you can quickly and effectively identify the issue. Plus, you can use a PDF editor that uses MFA for secure access.

PDFs are interactive and support a wide range of multimedia

While you can generally add images and hyperlinks to most document formats, with PDFs, you can do far more than that. It fully supports multimedia, so you could incorporate audio or video clipsneeded, as well as other interactive elements such as input fields.

Naturally, having an expanded range of options can be helpful if and when you want to create documents for distribution. For example, you could add a form to collect feedback from within the document.

PDFs have good compression.

Compared to most other document formats, PDFs have much better compression. Exporting your document as a PDF will reduce its file size. This will make it much easier to distribute, as you can transfer it more quickly and are less likely to run into issues such as file size limitations on email attachments.

Final Thoughts

It’s important to remember that while finding free PDF readers is easy, finding a good PDF editor can be more challenging. The chances of finding an editor for free are also meager. Despite this, PDF’s benefits make it the best format for distributing documents, especially in today’s climate, where cybercrime is rising.

The good news is that you can also use Annotate to complete PDF forms and add comments. If you’re using an Apple computer, you can open your PDF, and in ‘preview,’ the annotate menu is at the top horizontally above the PDF document. On Windows, you can use Microsoft Edge (the default browser) and use Annotate’s features, including adding a comment, writing in freehand, and selecting a colour to highlight text.