PDF Compliance Checker

This Power PDF Advanced facility checks the compliance of PDF files you create or receive. The PDF/A, PDF/X, PDF/E standards are supported.

For more information on PDF standards and on other file formats, see About PDF Versions.

The compliance checker appears in the Compliance panel. This is called from the Panel bar by the following tool:

If you do not see this tool, right-click in an empty area of the Panel bar and select Compliance.

This panel has the following buttons:

This displays different levels of compliance: in order of increasing severity. If the current PDF document is a PDF/A document, the list marks the highest level valid for that document with a check sign.

Compliance levels in the PDF/A family:

• PDF/A-1a

• PDF/A-1b

• PDF/A-2a

• PDF-A-2b

• PDF/A-2u

• PDF/A-3a

• PDF/A-3b

• PDF/A-3u

Compliance levels in the Accessibility family:

• Accessibility

• PDF/UA

Note: Beside the PDF/UA check, it is recommended to use the Accessibility check, which has a broader set of options to discover accessibility errors and as a good tool may help to make the document accessible and achieve PDF/UA compliance.

Compliance levels in the PDF/X family:

• PDF/X-1a
• PDF/X-3
• PDF/X-4
• PDF/X-4p
• PDF/X-5g
• PDF/X-5pg
• Color Profile...

Compliance levels in the PDF/E family:

• PDF/E-1

Choose a compliance level you want to test.

Use this to run a check on the current document against the chosen compliance level. Expand the report tree and click the button to the right of each entry for more information.

Click Fix to let the program make the necessary modifications to achieve compliance.

• If there are critical errors remaining after the fix, then an error message appears. Check the message or generate a report for further inspection.
• If there are no critical errors remaining after the fix, then the Save As dialog box appears. Specify a path and file name for the document. For details see the File Save As dialog box.

Click this to receive a report in HTML format that lists all problems found.

The following topics give guidance on each noncompliant issue the checker might flag, and how to solve them - either automatically (by clicking Fix) or manually.

Choose Accessibility from the Options drop-down list to check accessibility according to criteria presented in four groups:

Document issues

Page Content Issues

Forms, Tables and Lists

Alternate Texts and Headings

Parts of the PDF/A standards deal with accessibility, but their main purpose is to ensure time-proofing for PDF files to be archived for the long term. For more thorough  testing of a file's accessibility (mainly by screen reading programs), choose Accessibility and click Check.