How robust are pdf files

Would you send an email attachment in word or excel or would you convert it into acrobat format? Which is more robust and more resistant to damage?

I don't know which document type is more robust, but I will tell you that some people do not own Word or Excel. I would send it as a Portable Document Format file.

The version of the source program also can affect the readibility of a file. I first ran into that a few years ago when I would send Word docs with enhanced matadata images made on Word 2003 to people with earlier versions of Word. The images would just be a big jumble of lines and blobs. I solved that by converting the Word doc files to PDFs, which is what I now do with all files I send.

Converting files to PDF will embed fonts that otherwise might not carry over. It's possible to embed fonts into a document but converting to a PDF is more stable. Converting to PDF also stabilizes formatting.

Gear replies thank you both.

So sending in pdf solves the problem of the receiver not having word or excel and it also solves the problem of compatability issues between different version of office.

I'm surprised that Office has changed so many formats over the years but Adobe has managed to maintain the "universality" ( if there is such a word) of their pdf format. Kudos to Adobe

netadict said:

Gear replies thank you both.

So sending in pdf solves the problem of the receiver not having word or excel and it also solves the problem of compatability issues between different version of office.

I'm surprised that Office has changed so many formats over the years but Adobe has managed to maintain the "universality" ( if there is such a word) of their pdf format. Kudos to Adobe

In a way, you are comparing apples and kumquats. Office, etc. are for creating content and the changes in formats are to permit improvements that otherwise couldn't happen. One can do more with .docx than the older .doc. The whole purpose of PDFs was to be a container to allow cross platform viewing of files so maintaining compatibility was a part of the original purpose. A PDF created on any machine can be read on any other machine...usually.

Even PDFs have versions. Later versions can't be read on earlier PDF readers (although earlier versions can be read on later readers) anymore. At one time, Acrobat had the option to cut file size by saving to a file that could be read only on the most reason versions (you could choose which versions it would be compatible with) but the latest version, XI, no longer has that option (or I haven't found it yet; it's radically different from the version 9 I was using before upgrading last fall) and PDFs made with Acrobat XI can be read only on recent versions of readers. The purpose o0f this was to streamline making PDFs and to lighten the size of the file. Fortunately, since there are several free readers available, incompatibility is rarely a problem since it costs nothing to have the latest version installed.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

....Even PDFs have versions.....

And here are some of the ones offered by PDFCreator:




@OP,
Like Lady Fitzgerald said, there are versions of PDFs. And there are some fancy things that you can do within a PDF document that only a few PDF readers can correctly show. But if all you are doing is converting docs, you won't run into those issues. Everybody that I talk to on this topic gets the same suggest to send (e-mail) PDF documents. I even suggest that they use PDFCreator instead of the native PDF tools within some apps. PDFCreator just seems to handle inline images and image compression better than some of the other tools that I've tried.

If you happen to try PDFcreator, you can just leave everything at the default settings. You don't ever have to see the screen that I showed above. However, I sometimes convert dozens (even hundreds) of Word documents to PDF and PDFCreator can convert them one right after another. I just start the process and walk away.

Unfortunately, PDFCreator's installer offers other junk to be installed - so be careful if you opt to try it. And frankly, I don't like their user interface - but the tool is so functional, I stick with it.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

...kumquats....

Made me smile - thanks.

UsernameIssues said:

Lady Fitzgerald said:

....Even PDFs have versions.....

And here are some of the ones offered by PDFCreator:




@OP,
Like Lady Fitzgerald said, there are versions of PDFs. And there are some fancy things that you can do within a PDF document that only a few PDF readers can correctly show. But if all you are doing is converting docs, you won't run into those issues. Everybody that I talk to on this topic gets the same suggest to send (e-mail) PDF documents. I even suggest that they use PDFCreator instead of the native PDF tools within some apps. PDFCreator just seems to handle inline images and image compression better than some of the other tools that I've tried.

If you happen to try PDFcreator, you can just leave everything at the default settings. You don't ever have to see the screen that I showed above. However, I sometimes convert dozens (even hundreds) of Word documents to PDF and PDFCreator can convert them one right after another. I just start the process and walk away.

Unfortunately, PDFCreator's installer offers other junk to be installed - so be careful if you opt to try it. And frankly, I don't like their user interface - but the tool is so functional, I stick with it.

X2 for PDFCreator. Even though I have Adobe Acrobat Standard XI and use it frequently for making and editing PDFs, PDFCreator is faster for making simple PDFs, such as online receipts. PDFCreator is what is known as a virtual printer. You install and use it just like a printer. It works by taking the output that normally would be used to print a paper document and uses it to create the PDF. Best of all, it is free. Most people will never need the advanced options of the expensive Adobe Acrobat.

PDFCreator is also capable of making other kinds of graphic files, such as JPEG, PNG, etc.

I know that several forum members prefer to post links to the original vendor's website instead of to filehippo, but this is one case where I would not visit pdfcreator.com for the free installer. That version has many more "offers" that you have to reject. It starts with one installer that then downloads other installers. Maybe in a version or two, the installer at the filehippo website will be just as bad as the one on the pdfcreator.com website. :-(

I started to make screenshots to show the differences between the two installers, but I gave up after 15 files and opted to make the videos below. At the end of each video, you will see that IE10 (with 64bit tabs) is not exiting RAM as it should. It took me several tries to get each video to my liking (about 20 tries total and 4 hours). IE10 exited RAM only once.

The "computer" being recorded is a W7 pro Virtual Machine (VM) that is frozen (snapshot)... so when I exit the VM, it reverts back to a clean state. I tested that IE10 exits RAM after installing other stuff, so there does not seem to be a problem with the IE10 installation. Also, this VM is a relatively fresh OS build (27 April, with all updates applied). While IE10 did hang with both installers, I have not installed a lot of software using IE10. It may hang after using other installers too. And this hang is not so bad as to prevent a restart of the OS.

If you can stand to watch till the end of one video, you will notice that I look at IE10's IO activity (or lack thereof). There are some IO changes and some RAM changes, just not what I normally see if IE is exiting. I left it for more about an hour and it never exited RAM.

You might want to select 720p and full screen mode.




For this installer, be sure to deselect (uncheck) PDFArchitect