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Saving Documents to an Archive

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Large archives of paper documents are difficult to organize and maintain, and it is often practical to take data from these archives and store it digitally. Digital archives have many advantages: documents are easier to access, searches take much less time, the archive takes up less space, and documents do not deteriorate over time. Documents in digital archives are often stored in the PDF/A format.

PDF/A is a version of the PDF format that omits several features, including encryption, audio content, video content, and links to external sources. PDF/A files contain all of the data necessary to render them in the same way on different platforms.

Note: DjVu is yet another document archiving format. It is commonly used to store documents that contain many pictures, graphs, and formulas. See "Saving E-books" for more on saving documents in DjVu.

Saving in PDF/A

Select the PDF/A saving format if you want to create a searchable PDF document that looks like the original or if you need to store your document in an archive.

To save your text in PDF/A:

  • On the File menu, click Save Document As and then click PDF/A Document. Alternatively click the arrow next to Save button on the main toolbar and then click Save as PDF/A Document…. If the format that you need is not displayed in the list, click Save in Other Formats… and then select the desired format from the Save as type drop-down list.

Tip: Additional saving options are available in the Options dialog box: click Tools > Options…, click the Save tab, and then click the PDF/A tab.

The saving options on this tab are grouped into the following categories:

Default paper size

Select the paper size to be used when saving documents in PDF from the drop-down list.

Save mode

Depending on how you are planning to use your electronic document, select one of the following options:

  • Text and pictures only

This option saves only the recognized text and the associated pictures. The page will be fully searchable and the size of the PDF file will be small. The appearance of the resulting document may slightly differ from the original.

  • Text over the page image

This option saves the background and pictures of the original document and places the recognized text over them. Usually, this PDF type requires more disk space than Text and pictures only. The resulting PDF document is fully searchable. In some cases, the appearance of the resulting document may slightly differ from the original.

  • Text under the page image

This option saves the entire page image as a picture and places the recognized text underneath. Use this option to create a fully searchable document that looks virtually the same as the original.

  • Page image only

This option saves the exact image of the page. This type of PDF document will be virtually indistinguishable from the original but the file will not be searchable.

Depending on the save mode you select, some of the following options will become available:

  • Keep text and background colors

Select this option to retain the font color and background when saving in PDF.

  • Keep headers and footers

Preserves headers and footers in the output document.

  • Create table of contents

Select this option if you wish to create a table of contents from the document headings.

  • Compress images using MRC

Select this option to retain the visual quality of the text and the pictures in a highly compressed document.

  • Enable tagged PDF

Select this option to add PDF tags to the output PDF document.

Apart from text and pictures, PDF files can contain information about the document structure such as logical parts, pictures, and tables. This information is encoded in PDF tags. A PDF file equipped with PDF tags may be reflowed to fit different screen sizes and will display well on handheld devices.

  • Apply ABBYY PreciseScan to smooth characters on images

Select this option to smooth characters on the document using ABBYY's PreciseScan technology, making them less pixelated.

Image settings

The resulting file may be quite large if your text contains a lot of pictures or if you choose to save the page image together with the recognized text. To adjust the size of the resulting file and the quality of the pictures, select one of the options from the Image settings drop-down list:

  • Best quality (source image resolution)

Select this option to retain the quality of the pictures or the page image. The original resolution of the source image will be preserved.

  • Balanced

Select this option to reduce the size of the PDF file while keeping the quality of the pictures or page image at a reasonably high level.

  • Compact size

Select this option to obtain a small-sized PDF file. The resolution of the pictures and page image will be reduced to 300 dpi, affecting their quality.

  • Custom…

Select this option to choose your own picture and page image settings in the Custom Settings dialog box.

Tip: If you do not want to keep the pictures in the recognized text, make sure that the Keep pictures option is not selected.

14.01.2020 17:26:19

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