Portable documents.
WHAT THEY ARE FOR
Preserving appearance across devices and preventing casual editing.
WHEN TO USE ONE
Anything final Anything printed Anything sent outside
WHAT YOU CAN DO WITHOUT SPECIALIST SOFTWARE
Create them from most programs View and print Fill forms, where the document supports it Combine and split, with common tools
WHAT REQUIRES MORE
Editing text within one Extracting content reliably from complex layouts
WHY EDITING IS AWKWARD
The format describes appearance, not structure.
WHAT TO DO INSTEAD
Edit the original document and produce a new file.
WHAT TO CHECK BEFORE SENDING
That it opens correctly That fonts embedded properly That nothing was cut off
WHAT TO BE CAREFUL WITH
Scanned documents, which are images and contain no searchable text File size, which can be large
WHAT TO DO ABOUT SIZE
Compress it, where quality allows.
WHAT TO REMOVE
Metadata, which may name the author and the original file location.
