PDF/A

IronPDF provides support for exporting PDFs to the PDF/A-3b standard, which is a strict subset of the ISO PDF specification designed for creating archival versions of documents with the assurance that they will always display exactly as they were saved.

Additionally, IronPDF is committed to adhering to Google's initiative to enhance PDF archiving and accessibility, as well as complying with Section 508 standards for PDF documents. In 2021, IronPDF transitioned to rendering PDFs from HTML using the Google Chromium HTML rendering engine, which allows the software to inherit Google's accessibility improvements for PDF generation.

With IronPDF's convertToPdfA method, you have the capability to convert normal PDFs into compliance with archiving standards. Then, the output PDF can be exported.

Here's a sample code snippet showing how you can convert a PDF using IronPDF:

using IronPdf;
using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Initialize IronPDF Renderer
        var renderer = new IronPdf.PdfDocument();

        // Load an existing PDF document
        PdfDocument pdf = PdfDocument.FromFile("example.pdf");

        // Convert the PDF document to PDF/A-3b standard for archiving
        PdfDocument pdfA = pdf.ConvertToPdfA();

        // Save the converted PDF/A document
        pdfA.SaveAs("example_pdfA.pdf");

        Console.WriteLine("PDF was successfully converted to PDF/A-3b and saved.");
    }
}

using IronPdf;
using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Initialize IronPDF Renderer
        var renderer = new IronPdf.PdfDocument();

        // Load an existing PDF document
        PdfDocument pdf = PdfDocument.FromFile("example.pdf");

        // Convert the PDF document to PDF/A-3b standard for archiving
        PdfDocument pdfA = pdf.ConvertToPdfA();

        // Save the converted PDF/A document
        pdfA.SaveAs("example_pdfA.pdf");

        Console.WriteLine("PDF was successfully converted to PDF/A-3b and saved.");
    }
}

Imports IronPdf
Imports System

Friend Class Program
	Shared Sub Main()
		' Initialize IronPDF Renderer
		Dim renderer = New IronPdf.PdfDocument()

		' Load an existing PDF document
		Dim pdf As PdfDocument = PdfDocument.FromFile("example.pdf")

		' Convert the PDF document to PDF/A-3b standard for archiving
		Dim pdfA As PdfDocument = pdf.ConvertToPdfA()

		' Save the converted PDF/A document
		pdfA.SaveAs("example_pdfA.pdf")

		Console.WriteLine("PDF was successfully converted to PDF/A-3b and saved.")
	End Sub
End Class

Explanation:

• We begin by importing necessary namespaces such as IronPdf.
• Next, we create a new PdfDocument object, which is used to handle PDF operations.
• We load an existing PDF file named "example.pdf" into the pdf variable.
• Using the ConvertToPdfA() method, we convert the loaded PDF document to the PDF/A-3b standard.
• Finally, the converted document is saved as "example_pdfA.pdf", and a success message is printed to the console.

Ensure you have IronPDF installed in your project to run this code effectively.