Format
Acrobat PDF/A - Portable Document Format
Summary
- Name
- Acrobat PDF/A - Portable Document Format
- Version
- 4
- Identifiers
-
- MIME: application/pdf
- PUID: fmt/1910
- Format type
- Page Description
- Description
- PDF/A-4 is the file format described by ISO 19005-4:2020 “Document management — Electronic document file format for long-term preservation — Part 4: Use of ISO 32000-2 (PDF/A-4)”. It is the first of the PDF-Archival format family to be based on PDF 2.0. It has additional subsets – PDF/A-4e, aimed at engineering use-cases that allows for rich media such as interactive 3D elements to be embedded, and PDF/A-4f, that allows files of any format to be embedded.
- Note
- https://www.iso.org/standard/71832.html
- File extensions
-
pdf - Source
- Preservica / Preservica
- Developed by
- Adobe Systems Incorporated
Relationships
- Has lower priority than
- Has priority over
Internal signatures
PDF/A-4
- Note
- BOF – the specification states that this must begin at offset 0: ‘%PDF-2.’[0-9], then variable: ‘<pdfaid:part>4</pdfaid:part>’
Byte sequences
- Min Frag Length
- Absolute from BOF
- Offset
- 0
- Max offset
- 0
- Byte Sequence
255044462D322E[30:39]- Endianness
- None
- Min Frag Length
- Variable
- Offset
- None
- Max offset
- None
- Byte Sequence
3C7064666169643A706172743E343C2F7064666169643A706172743E- Endianness
- None
PDF/A-4
Byte sequences
- Min Frag Length
- Absolute from BOF
- Offset
- 0
- Max offset
- 0
- Byte Sequence
255044462D322E[30:39]- Endianness
- None
- Min Frag Length
- Variable
- Offset
- 0
- Max offset
- None
- Byte Sequence
7064666169643A706172743D223422- Endianness
- None
Changelog
-
Added in V121
- Release date
- 24 September 2025
Acrobat PDF/A - Portable Document Format v.4: 1 additional signature variant. Submitted by Preservica.
Acrobat PDF/A - Portable Document Format v.4: Signature researched and samples provided by Preservica.
-
Added in V115
- Release date
- 15 November 2023
Acrobat PDF/A - Portable Document Format 4: Signature researched and samples provided by Preservica.
Acrobat PDF/A - Portable Document Format 4: Full entry added. Submitted by Preservica.