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PDF. Three letters that changed the world.

What is PDF?

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format used to present and exchange documents reliably, independent of software, hardware, or operating system. Invented by Adobe, PDF is now an open standard maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). PDFs can contain links and buttons, form fields, audio, video, and business logic. They can also be signed electronically and are easily viewed using free Acrobat Reader DC software.

We invented PDF.

In 1991, Adobe cofounder Dr. John Warnock launched thepaper-to-digital revolution with an idea he called The Camelot Project. The goal was to enable anyone to capture documents from any application, send electronic versions of thesedocuments anywhere, and view and print them on any machine. By 1992, Camelot had developed into PDF. Today, it is the format trusted by businesses around the world.

Because looks really do matter.

Warnock's vision is alive, well, and evolving. When you save a document or image as an Adobe PDF, it looks just the way youintended it to. While many PDFs are simply pictures of pages, Adobe PDFs preserve all the data in the original file - even when text, graphics, spreadsheets, and more arecombined in a single file.

PDFs have standards.

You can be confident your PDF file meets ISO 32000 standardsfor electronic document exchange, including special-purpose standards such as PDF/A for archiving, PDF/E for engineering, and PDF/X for printing. You can also create PDFs to meet a range of accessibility standards that make content more usable by people with disabilities.

In 2002, Time Inc. standardized on PDF/X as its preferred delivery format for advertisements.

It's all about security.

When you work with electronic documents, it's important to make protection a part of your routine. You can password protectyour PDFs to prevent others from copying and editing. Redact them to permanently delete sensitive information. And even find and remove hidden data.

No paper printouts needed. Ever.

When you need to electronically sign a PDF, it's easy using Adobe Acrobat Reader DC the Acrobat Reader mobile app, or the AdobeSign mobile app. For managing legally-binding electronic or digital signature processes, try Adobe Acrobat DC or Adobe Sign.

Get more out of scanned documents.

You canscan paper documentsand forms to Adobe PDF and get smart files that are easy to search, share, and store. Adobe PDFsuse optical character recognition (OCR) technology, so you can edit and comment on the documents you've scanned.

Learn how to

Create PDFs

Create forms

Edit PDFs

Protect PDFs

Export PDFs

Collect signatures from others

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