There are different document formats available for presenting and transferring information.
Usually, people use Word Documents and PowerPoint Presentations because of their ease of use, however, PDFs have started to become popular because of their ease of use and accessibility.
PDFs have now replaced Word documents as the major document used across the world and there are several reasons for that. Here are some reasons Why PDF is Better Than Other Document Formats Out There:
1. Universality
PDF documents are universal and they can be run independently of the software, hardware, or OS. PDF files appear the same no matter which device, software, or operating system you are using to view them, however, if we talk about other document formats such as Word Documents then they are very easy to edit but when you save a Word Document on one operating system and open it on another operating system then the document may not appear and look the way you intended it to.
For example, you create a Word Document on Mac and save it. Now, when you open the document on your Windows PC then the format of the document will not be the same as when you created it whereas, with PDF, there is no such problem.
Users can create a PDF on any platform and it will appear the same as the users created it no matter what the device or platform.
2. Convertible Into Another Document Formats
No matter what format you use to create a document, whether it is a Word Document, Excel Document, or PowerPoint Presentation, all such formats can be easily converted into PDF in just a few moments.
The conversation from other file formats into PDF is very quick and easy, taking a few seconds only. There are different online editors available such as Lua that allow the easy conversion of different formats into PDF. For example, you can easily convert Excel to PDF, Word to PDF, or JPG to PDF without any issue.
Plus, these PDF files can also be converted back into any of these formats in just a few moments too. This makes PDFs better than other formats in that they can be easily converted to other documents formats and also from other formats into PDF.
3. Security & Password Protection
What makes PDF different from the rest of the documents is that it is one of the few file formats that allow password protection. You can easily secure a PDF file with a password. In this way, the contents of the documents are secure and both you and the recipient will be relaxed that the contents of the document are secure.
Plus, it is one of the few documents that can actually be accepted in a court of law. For any document to be accepted in the court of law, it should leave an electronic footprint after being edited and PDF fulfills this requirement. PDFs are very hard to edit without leaving an electronic footprint.
4. Addition of Text and Non-Text Elements
Unlike other document formats, PDF allows the addition of both text elements and non-text elements into the documents. You can easily add different non-text elements such as animations, images, graphics, visuals, tables, etc into your PDF document and they will appear the same.
Studies have shown that documents that contain both text and visual elements are much more liked than those containing only images or texts. This makes PDF better than other document formats because you can embed all sorts of non-text elements into PDFs.
5. Font Problems
It is a common problem faced by many users that they create their Word or Excel documents in Windows and when they access these documents on Mac or mobile phones then they get fonts problems because not all Microsoft fonts are available in other operating systems and when a specific font is not available on other devices the documents will look completely different because of the font style and size differences, however, with PDFs that is not the case.
As mentioned earlier, PDF documents stay the same no matter on which platform you open them. There is no font problem or layout problem with PDFs. You can send the PDF document to virtually anyone and the layout and format of the document will stay the same. There would be no font or layout problem.
6. Low File Size
Another advantage of using PDF documents is that they have the ability to compress extremely high-quality and high-size files into smaller file sizes. Not only does it help you to reduce the size of the document so you can easily send it without exceeding the file size limit but it also helps you to save some space.
Plus, if the file size of PDF does exceed the file size limit then PDFs can easily be compressed and their file size can be reduced substantially.
7. PDFs Can Be Split Down Into Smaller Files
PDFs can also be broken down and split into smaller files. This is one of the things done to prevent sensitive information from people who don’t have to see all the information but have to see other parts of the PDF.
Plus, Emails face this problem where they choke onto larger files and cannot send huge files. In these cases, splitting PDFs into smaller files becomes essential. There are different tools available that allow you to Split PDFs whereas other documents such as Word or Excel cannot be split into smaller files.