conved.com can now convert files to PDF/A, the archival variant of PDF. Choose the PDF/A tile in the converter and upload a Word document, a spreadsheet, a presentation, an image or a PDF. Scanned pages get a searchable text layer, and every result is checked against the standard before you download it.
What PDF/A is for
PDF/A is defined in ISO 19005. It takes ordinary PDF and removes everything that could stop a file from opening correctly in the future: fonts must be embedded, encryption, JavaScript, audio and video are forbidden, colours must not depend on a particular device. Archives, records departments, universities and public bodies ask for it, and many court and e-filing portals list it among accepted formats. Requirements differ from one organisation to the next, so check which part of the standard yours names before you convert.
We produce PDF/A-2b: part 2 of the standard, based on PDF 1.7, at level b, which guarantees that the pages look right. The file has the usual .pdf extension.
Scans become searchable
When you convert a PDF, pages that already contain text keep their content. Pages that are only a picture, typically a scan or a phone photo of a letter, go through text recognition first. The text is stored as an invisible layer under the image, so the page looks exactly as scanned, but you can search it and copy from it. That matters for archives: a scanned contract you cannot search is one you will not find in five years.
Recognition works for documents up to 30 pages. It reads English, German, Czech and Slovak, and detects Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Korean from the first page. Longer scans are converted to PDF/A without recognition.
Every file is checked
This is the part we care about most. A file declares itself PDF/A with a few entries in its metadata. Any program can write them, and writing them proves nothing. The Library of Congress notes that “many PDF documents that identify themselves as PDF/A are not fully compliant” and cites a study in which 50 of 201 PDF/A files made by a widely used desktop PDF editor failed validation.
So each result goes through an independent validator that tests it against the rules of ISO 19005-2. The download step shows either “Verified: meets PDF/A-2b” or how many rules the file does not meet. You find out now, not when an archive or a portal rejects the upload.
Why “save as PDF” or an AI assistant is not the same
A plain “save as PDF” makes a perfectly good PDF, but not necessarily PDF/A: fonts may be left out, transparency and metadata are not checked. Word for Windows does have a PDF/A option (Save As, PDF, Options, “ISO 19005-1 compliant (PDF/A)”), which produces PDF/A-1 without telling you whether the file passed.
People also ask chat assistants to “turn this into PDF/A”. An assistant can generate a PDF and label it PDF/A. Unless it runs the file through a validator, it cannot know whether the label is true, and the label is exactly what portals and archives check. Conformance is a property you test, not one you can state.
Limits
- Password-protected PDFs cannot be converted.
- Digitally signed PDFs are not converted, because conversion would invalidate the signature. Convert first, sign afterwards.
- Fonts we do not have on the server, most often Aptos, the Microsoft 365 default, are replaced, so line breaks can shift slightly.
- PDF/A-1, PDF/A-3 (used for e-invoices with embedded XML) and the tagged level a are not available yet.
Free limits are unchanged: up to 10 files at once, each up to 100 MB, no registration. Try it with PDF to PDF/A or DOCX to PDF/A.