The PDF file format has gained popularity not only in the medical, legal and real-estate industries but also in schools and colleges. Some small businesses are also making extensive use of this file format. When Adobe launched the PDF format as an open standard in 2008, it was widely adopted as the most common file format everywhere, even above Word and PowerPoint.
This happened because the PDF file format has numerous practical benefits over Word and PowerPoint documents. Let’s explore some of them:
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Universal Compatibility
One of the major reasons of the PDF file format’s popularity is that most of the apps and websites support this format. Modern browsers are adept at opening and displaying the PDFs. Today, modern operating systems have built-in apps that can easily open PDF files. This means that the same PDF can be operated on Windows, Mac or Linux without any change.
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Portability
The name itself suggests that the PDF file format is portable. You don’t have to worry about any dependent features while transferring the files around. You must have experienced the problem of missing fonts with Word documents or with the missing images in a transferred PowerPoint presentation.
In the case of PDFs, these mishaps never happen. You can easily share a PDF file and none of the fonts, images, and formatting are altered in the process.
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Easily Created
To create a PDF file is extremely simple. There are a number of apps that let you save your current file as a PDF. Then later you can copy or share it anywhere with ease. Even your Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents can be exported as PDFs and then viewed as a PDF file.
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Versatility
A PDF file can hold images, graphics, text, vectors, and many other aspects. This means that you can use it for creating your college assignments, long annual reports, presentations, spreadsheets, etc.
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Reliability
While creating a PDF file, you can include a number of paragraphs, images, fonts, and any other formatting techniques. The data will be displayed exactly as you created no matter where you are viewing it. This makes the PDF an incredibly reliable file format for exporting documents that you intend to be conveyed without any data loss. Even image files can be easily shared after converting into pdf formats. Convert your jpg file into pdf and share them without the loss of quality.
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Security
A PDF file can be easily secured with a password so that its content can be protected from any unauthorized person. It can only be viewed after you enter the correct password once it has been password-protected. This secured PDF file can now be sent over email or any messaging apps just like before.
If later you wish to remove the password from the PDF file, you can easily do so if you remember its original password.
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Compressible
If you wish to share a file that is very long and contains a number of images and graphics, you might want to decrease its size. This is because emails and most of the messaging apps have a file-size limit. Just by lowering the quality, you can decrease the size of a PDF file according to the file size limit.
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Version Independent
You must have faced this issue while opening a .docx or a .pptx file shared by someone, only to realize that it is not supported by the software installed in your device because of a different version. You won’t have to think about this issue while sharing a PDF file as it is universally compatible.
Any PDF file can be opened in any PDF reader. Even when combining PDF files, you don’t have to worry about their versions.
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Detailed Feedback
A PDF file allows you to put annotations in the file. Simply by sharing the file with others, you can receive their detailed feedback. This is very useful when you are working in a group. Your group members can even highlight texts, add notes, scribble or draw content or add arrows and other shapes in the file using the annotation feature.
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Professionalism
The PDF format gives a very professional and sophisticated appeal to the file. Whether it is a resume or some legal papers, all important documents are generally PDFs due to this reason.
If you haven’t yet worked on a PDF file, give it a go with ViewPDF. It is a helpful tool, with the help of which you can convert all sorts of file formats into PDFs with ease.