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Summary
Name	Acrobat PDF/A - Portable Document Format
Version	4
Other names	PDF/A-4
Identifiers	MIME: application/pdf PUID: fmt/1910
Family
Classification	Page Description
Disclosure
Description	PDF/A-4 is the file format described by ISO 19005-4:2020 “Document management — Electronic document file format for long-term preservation — Part 4: Use of ISO 32000-2 (PDF/A-4)”. It is the first of the PDF-Archival format family to be based on PDF 2.0. It has additional subsets – PDF/A-4e, aimed at engineering use-cases that allows for rich media such as interactive 3D elements to be embedded, and PDF/A-4f, that allows files of any format to be embedded.
Orientation
Byte order
Related file formats	Has lower priority than Acrobat PDF/A - Portable Document Format (4e) Has lower priority than Acrobat PDF/A - Portable Document Format (4f) Has priority over PDF 2.0 - Portable Document Format (2.0)
Technical Environment
Released
Supported until
Format Risk
Developed by	Adobe Systems Incorporated
Supported by	None.
Source	Preservica / Preservica
Source date	25 Aug 2023
Source description	v.121: new internal signature (submitted by Preservica).
Last updated	22 Sep 2025
Note	https://www.iso.org/standard/71832.html