# Check Whether Your PDF Really Is PDF/A *Upload a PDF to validate it against the PDF/A archiving standards and get every non-conformance listed with its severity, the clause it breaks and the object it lives in.* Validate a PDF against PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, PDF/A-3, PDF/A-4 or PDF/UA online for free. See every compliance error with its specification clause, page and PDF object, and download the full report as JSON. Page: PDF/A is the ISO standard for documents that must stay readable decades from now, which it achieves by banning anything whose meaning depends on the outside world: fonts that are not embedded, colours with no profile to interpret them, encryption, external media. A file that opens perfectly today can still fail PDF/A, because "it looks right on my machine" is exactly the assumption the standard exists to remove. This validator answers the question properly. Upload a PDF and it is checked against the standard with Aspose.PDF, the same engine used throughout Documentize, and every non-conformance comes back listed rather than summarised: what is wrong, whether it is an error or a warning, which clause of the specification it breaks, and which internal PDF object and page it sits on. That last part is what makes a report actionable — "font not embedded" is a fact, "font 'ArialMT' is not embedded, clause 6.3.4, object 36, page 1" is something you can go and fix. By default the file is judged against the standard it declares for itself. A PDF that claims PDF/A-2B is checked against PDF/A-2B, not against a level someone had to guess at, so a passing verdict means the file keeps the promise it makes. You can also name a level explicitly when compliance is a requirement handed to you rather than a property of the file — a regulator, a records system or a client asking for PDF/A-2B specifically. PDF/A-1 through PDF/A-4 are all supported, along with PDF/UA-1 for accessibility. Identical problems are grouped by default. A single unembedded font is reported by the underlying engine once per use, which can turn one defect into dozens of rows; grouping collapses those into one entry with an occurrence count, so the list reflects how many things are wrong rather than how often they were noticed. The full report also downloads as JSON, ready to feed into a build check or an ingestion pipeline. ## How to - **选择文件** 您可以从文件系统、Dropbox 和 Google 云端硬盘中选择文件。 - **按下按钮 “Validate PDF/A”** 以便上传文件进行处理。 - **等待完成** 这将需要 10 秒到几分钟，具体取决于文件的数量和大小。 ## FAQ ### My PDF opens fine everywhere. Why does it fail PDF/A? Because PDF/A is not about whether a file opens today, it is about whether it will still render identically when the machine, the fonts and the software around it are gone. The most common failures are fonts that are referenced rather than embedded, colours with no output intent or ICC profile, transparency, encryption, and JavaScript or external links. All of those work fine right now and are precisely what the standard forbids. ### Which PDF/A level should I validate against? If you are checking a file that is supposed to be PDF/A already, leave the selector on automatic detection: the file is then judged against the level it claims, which is the only fair test of it. Choose a level yourself when the requirement comes from outside — an archive or regulator asking for PDF/A-2B, say. As a rule the letter matters more than the number: B guarantees visual reproduction, U additionally requires text to be extractable as Unicode, and A adds the full tagging needed for accessibility, so A is the hardest to satisfy. ### What do the clause numbers and object IDs in the report mean? The clause is the section of the PDF/A specification that was violated, so "6.3.4" points you at the exact rule rather than a paraphrase of it. The object ID is the number of the internal PDF object at fault, and the page is where it is used. Together they turn a generic complaint into a specific location, which is what you need when the fix has to be made in the tool that produced the file. Keywords: pdf/a validator, validate pdfa, pdf/a compliance check, pdf/a-1b validator, pdf/a-2b, pdf/a-3, pdf/a-4, pdf/ua, archiving standard, veraPDF alternative, online pdf validator