Is Your PDF Actually PDF/A? Find Out Before the Clerk Does
Free PDF/A checker for court e-filing: drop in a PDF and get a pass or a precise list of violations, from unembedded fonts to encryption to missing PDF/A metadata, each with a plain-English fix. Your files are processed on your own computer and never leave your browser.
Quick answer: PDF/A is the ISO 19005 archival format many courts require for e-filing because it guarantees a document stays readable and identical decades from now. To check whether a PDF really is PDF/A, add it below: the tool reads the file's PDF/A identification metadata, then tests the requirements filings actually get rejected on, including font embedding, encryption, JavaScript, attachments, and the color output intent. Everything runs in your browser, free, with no signup, and you get a copyable report listing every violation and how to fix it.
Check Your PDF Against the PDF/A Requirements
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Is My PDF PDF/A Compliant? What This Validation Actually Tests
A PDF/A file makes a claim about itself and then has to live up to it. The claim is a small XMP metadata packet naming the part (PDF/A-1, 2, or 3) and conformance level (a, b, or u); living up to it means the file's actual contents follow that flavor's rules. This checker works the same way a filing system's validator does: it reads the claim first, then opens the file's internal structure and walks it. It resolves every font on every page (and inside form resources) and confirms an embedded font program is present, looks for an encryption dictionary, hunts for JavaScript, launch, sound, and movie actions and the event hooks that fire them, checks for file attachments and XFA form data, verifies the color output intent and its embedded ICC profile against the device color the pages actually use, and inspects annotations for missing appearance streams and forbidden types.
The result is a verdict you can act on. A file with no claim gets the honest headline, not marked as PDF/A, plus a list of anything a conversion will need to fix. A file that claims PDF/A and breaks the rules gets each violation by name, with the pages involved where that makes sense, what the violation means, and the realistic fix, which is usually a re-export rather than hand surgery. And a clean file gets a pass you can take to the filing portal with reasonable confidence.
Court E-Filing PDF Requirements: Why PDF/A Exists
A court record is permanent. The brief you file this year may be pulled up by a judge, an appellate panel, or an archivist decades from now, on software that does not exist yet. Ordinary PDFs are a poor fit for that job: they can silently depend on fonts installed on the author's machine, colors defined by whatever monitor rendered them, scripts that run on open, and passwords that lock the file the moment the key is lost. PDF/A, standardized as ISO 19005, removes every one of those dependencies. Everything the document needs to render is inside the file, and everything that could change how it renders is banned.
That is why filing systems validate the format instead of taking the file's word for it, and why the rejection notices are so unforgiving: an archival record that is 99% self-contained is not self-contained. Whether your court requires PDF/A at all, and which flavor, is set by its local rules and e-filing procedures, so check those before converting. If the document itself is still being written, our legal document drafting services deliver filings prepared to the court's formatting requirements, and our legal template library covers the common litigation documents, from a civil complaint template to a motion to dismiss template to a proof of service form.
The PDF/A Violations Behind Most E-Filing Rejections
Validators can fail a file for hundreds of reasons, but real rejections cluster around a short list, and the order is remarkably consistent:
- Fonts not embedded. The king of rejections. The file names a font instead of carrying it, so the document depends on the reader's machine. Standard fonts like Helvetica, Times, and Arial are the usual offenders because many tools skip embedding them by default.
- No PDF/A claim at all. The document was printed or saved as a plain PDF and never exported as PDF/A, so it lacks the identification metadata and usually the output intent too. Nothing is broken; it was simply never converted.
- Encryption. Any password or usage restriction puts an /Encrypt dictionary in the file, and PDF/A forbids encryption in every flavor.
- JavaScript and interactive actions. Fillable forms are the common source: field validation scripts, format scripts, reset and import actions. All banned, because archived documents must not execute anything.
- Missing color output intent. Pages use plain RGB, CMYK, or grayscale without the embedded ICC profile that anchors what those colors mean.
- Transparency, in PDF/A-1 courts. Drop shadows, watermarks, and PNG images with alpha channels are fine under PDF/A-2 but fatal under the older A-1.
- The long tail. XFA dynamic forms, file attachments outside PDF/A-3, annotations with no appearance stream, LZW-compressed streams from ancient software, and the dynamic rendering flag.
The checker above tests every item on this list. One practical note on workflow: fix the format last. If you still need to scrub hidden metadata from the PDF or stamp exhibit numbers with the free Bates numbering tool, do that first, then convert to PDF/A, then run this check on the final bytes you intend to file.
Reading a PDF/A Label: Part + Conformance Level
PDF/A-2b reads as part 2, level b. The part is the generation: 1 (2005, strictest, no transparency), 2 (2011, allows transparency, layers, and JPEG2000), 3 (2012, adds file attachments of any type), 4 (2020, based on PDF 2.0). The level is the promise: b preserves visual appearance, u adds guaranteed Unicode text extraction, a adds full accessibility tagging. When a court says only "PDF/A", a valid PDF/A-2b file is the widely accepted default.
PDF/A-1b vs PDF/A-2b: Which One Does Your Court Want?
The two flavors courts actually name are PDF/A-1b and PDF/A-2b, and the practical difference comes down to what modern documents contain. PDF/A-1 was written against PDF 1.4, before transparency could be archived safely, so it bans soft masks, alpha blending, layers, and JPEG2000 images, and it caps some internal limits that large modern files can exceed. A Word document with a drop shadow, a letterhead logo saved as a transparent PNG, or a highlight drawn at partial opacity will all convert cleanly to PDF/A-2b and all fail PDF/A-1b.
The decision rule is simple. If your court names a flavor, produce exactly that flavor. If it just says PDF/A, produce PDF/A-2b: it is the current mainstream, every serious tool writes it, and it tolerates the transparency that modern word processors emit. This checker follows the same logic: it judges each file against the flavor the file claims, defaults to the PDF/A-2b rules when the file claims nothing, and separately flags transparency so you know the file would need flattening in an A-1 court. If you are producing the document on pleading paper for a court that requires numbered lines, our pleading paper generator builds the page layout for you.
What a Pass Here Means, and What It Does Not
We call this a checker, not a certifier, on purpose. The full ISO 19005 standards run to hundreds of individual clauses, down to details like character encoding tables inside font programs and the internal consistency of ICC profiles. No quick browser check covers all of that, and we will not pretend this one does. What it covers is the set of violations that dominate real court rejections: the identification metadata, encryption, font embedding, scripts and actions, attachments, XFA, output intent and device color, transparency, LZW compression, annotation appearances, and dynamic rendering.
In practice that means a failure reported here is a real problem you should fix before filing, and a pass means the common blockers are absent, which is a strong signal but not a certificate. The court's own validator is final, and filing systems layer their own non-PDF/A rules on top: size limits, page dimensions, naming conventions, virus scanning. Leave time before the deadline for the portal to say yes. When a check fails, our companion PDF/A converter fixes what this tool finds, entirely in your browser, and the fix hints on each finding also point you to the re-export route.
Pro Tip: Convert Last, Check the Exact Bytes You Will File
Every edit after conversion can silently break conformance: adding a page, stamping a header, merging exhibits, or re-saving in a non-archival tool can strip the output intent or introduce an unembedded font. Finish the document completely, redact, scrub, stamp, and merge first, convert to PDF/A as the final step, and run this check on the finished file itself, not an earlier draft.
This Tool Is Not Legal Advice
This free utility inspects the technical format of PDF files; it does not review the content of your document, and using it does not create an attorney-client relationship. E-filing requirements, including whether PDF/A is required and which flavor, vary by court and change over time: your court's local rules, e-filing procedures, and the filing system's technical requirements control. Confirm them in your own case before filing, or with a licensed attorney. We draft and prepare documents; you review, sign, serve, and file them.
PDF/A Compliance Questions, Answered
What is PDF/A and how is it different from a regular PDF?
PDF/A is the archival profile of the PDF format, standardized as the ISO 19005 family. A PDF/A file must be completely self-contained and future-proof: every font embedded, colors anchored to an embedded ICC profile, no encryption, no JavaScript, no audio or video, and no content that depends on outside resources. A regular PDF can do all of those things, which is exactly why courts do not trust it for the permanent record. Visually the two are identical; the difference is entirely in what the file is allowed to contain.
How do I know if my PDF is PDF/A compliant?
Two ways. First, a true PDF/A file declares itself: it carries XMP metadata naming its part and conformance level, which is why Adobe Acrobat shows a blue banner reading "This file claims compliance with the PDF/A standard" when you open one. Second, the claim has to be true, and that is what a checker is for: add your file to the tool on this page and it reads the identification metadata, then tests the requirements filings actually get rejected on, from font embedding to encryption to color output intent, and reports pass or a precise violation list.
Why was my e-filing rejected for not being PDF/A?
The filing system ran an automated validator against your PDF and something inside the file broke a PDF/A requirement. The usual culprits, roughly in the order we encounter them: a font that is not embedded (by far the most common), a file that was never exported as PDF/A at all so it carries no PDF/A metadata, password protection or usage restrictions, a fillable form with JavaScript in it, a missing color output intent, or transparency in a court that requires the older PDF/A-1 flavor. Run the file through the checker above and it will tell you which one you hit.
What is the difference between PDF/A-1b and PDF/A-2b?
The number is the generation, the letter is the strictness. PDF/A-1 (2005) is built on the old PDF 1.4 format, so it forbids transparency, layers, and JPEG2000 images. PDF/A-2 (2011) is built on the ISO-standardized PDF 1.7 and allows all three, which makes it much easier to satisfy with modern documents. The b in both stands for "basic": the visual appearance is preserved reliably. Level a adds accessibility tagging, and level u (available from A-2 on) guarantees the text can be extracted as Unicode. For court filing, the b levels are the common requirement, and a valid PDF/A-2b file satisfies most systems that ask for PDF/A.
How do I convert a PDF to PDF/A?
Real conversion has to rebuild what the file is missing: embed every font, strip encryption, scripts, and forbidden actions, write the PDF/A identification metadata, and add an output intent with an embedded ICC color profile. Our free PDF/A converter does exactly that, entirely in your browser, and re-validates the result with this checker before offering the download. When it cannot conform a file automatically (an unusual font with no safe substitute, for example), the reliable fallback is to re-export from the source document: Microsoft Word (Save As PDF, then Options, then "PDF/A compliant") and LibreOffice (Export as PDF, "Archival (PDF/A)") both write PDF/A directly.
Does this PDF/A checker upload my documents?
No. Your files are read and analyzed entirely inside your browser on your own computer: there is no upload, no server-side processing, and no stored copy anywhere. That matters because the PDFs people check before filing are court documents, often containing confidential, sealed, or privileged material that has no business passing through an unknown third-party server. You can confirm the behavior in your browser's developer tools: the network panel shows no request carrying your document.
Do all courts require PDF/A for electronic filing?
No, and this is worth checking before you spend time converting. Requirements vary by court and by filing system: some require PDF/A outright, some recommend it, some accept ordinary PDFs, and among the ones that require it, some specify a flavor. The controlling sources are your court's local rules, its e-filing procedures or user manual, and the filing system's technical requirements page. When a court does require PDF/A without naming a flavor, a valid PDF/A-2b file is the safe choice.
What does "font not embedded" mean, and how do I fix it?
PDF files can either carry a full copy of each font inside the file or just name the font and hope the reader's computer has it. PDF/A requires the first, because the second breaks the moment the file is opened on a machine without that font, which is fatal for an archival record. The classic offenders are the standard fonts (Helvetica, Times, Arial, Courier) that many tools leave unembedded on purpose to save space. The fix is almost never manual: re-export the document with a PDF/A option enabled, which forces every font to embed, or run a proper PDF/A conversion on the existing file.
Can a scanned PDF be PDF/A?
Yes. A scanned document is just images of pages, and images are fine in PDF/A as long as the file around them follows the rules: an output intent with an embedded ICC profile to anchor the image colors, no encryption, and PDF/A identification metadata. If OCR added an invisible text layer, the OCR font must be embedded like any other. Most scanner software has a PDF/A output setting; turning it on at scan time is far easier than converting afterward.
What is the pdfaid metadata this checker looks for?
It is the file's own declaration of what it claims to be. PDF/A requires an XMP metadata packet in the document catalog containing a pdfaid:part entry (1, 2, 3, or 4, the generation) and a pdfaid:conformance entry (A, B, or U, the level). Validators read this first: a file without the declaration is simply not PDF/A, no matter how clean its contents are, and a file with the declaration is then held to the rules of the flavor it claims. That is why this checker reports "not marked as PDF/A" as the headline finding when the packet is missing.
Is a pass from this checker a guarantee my filing will be accepted?
No, and we want to be straight about that. Full ISO 19005 validation involves hundreds of individual clauses; this checker tests the ones that dominate real-world court rejections, so a pass is a strong signal, not a certificate. The court's own validator is the only one that decides, and filing systems also enforce non-PDF/A rules (file size limits, page size, bookmarks, security scans) that are outside what any PDF/A tool measures. Treat a pass here as "no known blockers" and leave time before the deadline for the court's system to confirm it.
Which PDF/A conformance level should I pick: a, b, or u?
For court filing, b is the practical answer unless your court says otherwise. Level b ("basic") guarantees the pages will render identically forever, which is what filing systems care about, and it is the easiest to produce. Level u adds guaranteed Unicode text extraction, useful for searchability and cheap to have if your export tool offers it. Level a ("accessible") additionally requires full logical structure tagging, which most conversion tools cannot generate automatically from an untagged document, so only chase it where accessibility rules genuinely demand it.
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