In order to adequately utilize the full potential of all digital documents, a user has to have a certain degree of knowledge which will aid him in every step of the way. The landscape of modern technologies is ever-changing at a breathtaking pace with a constant exponential growth, and at times it can be quite challenging to keep track of all the state-of-the-art advancements that the second decade of the 21st century has in its wide array of tricks.

But just as it’s imperative to master the new and improved trends of technology, it is also severely important to grasp the older remnants of tech that are still heavily in use today. This article will predominantly revolve around such a vintage-tech companion, the Portable Document Format.

The PDF, conceived and created by Adobe corporation in the first years of the 1990s, had a specific task from the very start, and that is to simplify and alleviate sending of files between computers, and ever since then it has been performing that task perfectly. Because of its universal formatting (the way it places and layers all the date inside a file), every document that was transformed to PDF can be viewed on all operating systems and devices exactly as it was created in the first place. Other file formats have genuine difficulties achieving this result, and because of this it is advisory to convert the file in question to PDF prior to sending, and by doing this ensuring that the file will reach its destination in an absolutely viewable condition. The main problem with the PDF occurs if the user who is on the receiving end desires to edit the document he got, because once the PDF is made from another file, it automatically becomes a read-only file, and no changes can be made to it without using software tools who are specifically designed to handle this type of task.

Tips for Better Document Management

Convert PDFs back to original, editable file format

The majority of files used in modern business are a part of MS Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), so how does the conversion process look like exactly? In most paid programs, once you open the file in question, there will be numerous fine-tuning options (selecting the desired pages, manual editing of the text or other parts of the file and so forth). There are also numerous free online tools that don’t allow the same volume of options as the premium software solutions, but for basic needs they undoubtedly do the trick. Of all the programs in the Office suite, the most versatile of them by far is Excel, because of its highly editable structure or rows and columns, and here you can check out a free tool for converting PDFs back to Excel.

The file is edited and ready for further use. Now what?

Once the conversion is complete and a file returned to its native state, you’ll be able to manipulate the document in which ever way you please. If you then require to send the file to someone else, you can transform it to PDF again (directly from the program in which you were performing the editing), thus repeating the entire cycle.

One more thing you should know about PDF documents

Another neat feature of the PDF is that it allows the creator of the file to set the level of security of every file it creates. By generating a password, the user can select if the person who receives the file can copy, modify or even view the file without the password permission. It should be noted that these options are only a part of the paid software solutions, but for people sending sensitive private data, it’s definitely a small price to pay.