The use of electronic documents in all spheres of human activity is becoming widespread today. On the contrary, the paper media are turning to a thing of the past, as well as the expenses for office supplies, the need to maintain printers, organize paper documents storage, and other concerns. In addition to these material reasons, an essential factor of digitalization is the huge difference in the speed of circulation of electronic and paper documents.
Therefore, when choosing a format for digitizing their office workflow, many companies and organizations highlight the speed indicator as the main one and give preference to PDF. Learn about the advantages of PDF over Word Document to speed up your paperwork and implement best practices for digital workflows with PDF Flex.
Top Contenders for Office Document Work
Although PDF products have emerged as the undisputed leaders around the world today, for some time, they closely competed with Microsoft Word. When PDF was introduced to the public in 1993, Word clearly dominated the software market. It seemed that its merits were so undoubted that PDF technology simply could not make its way to the target audience.
At first, before Adobe Systems made Acrobat Reader free in 1994, practically no one paid attention to PDF. However, after a successful marketing campaign and improvements to the initial weak sides of PDF project, the advantages of the PDF solution over Word Document became more and more obvious to consumers. And today, the situation is exactly the opposite — for the Word to be able to regain its former leadership, it needs to become more technologically advanced than PDF.
What Factors Make PDF a Better Solution Than a Word Document
Compatibility
- One of the goals of creating a PDF was to preserve the presentation of the pages of a document, regardless of which versions of the program and on which operating system or device you are viewing them. And in this regard, PDF is ideal: when you create PDF file, it will look identical on any media and when using any software.
- Microsoft Word did not care about compatibility at all. It releases updates regularly, at least once every 2 years. But often, a file created in a new version looks different in previous versions. And this creates great inconvenience when printing files, sending them, etc.
Open Source vs. Closed Source Software
- PDF, for the first 15 years of its existence, was in a proprietary format. However, in 2008, it became open source software. And today, developers and other interested parties can download ISO 32000-2 for free. Because of this, there are many competing PDF services that strive to provide their users with the most advanced and efficient tools for working with PDF.
- Microsoft Office and Word Document as part of it remain proprietary software despite their longer history of existence. This makes it closed to the creation of Word-compliant implementations by external developers.
Security
When you convert documents to electronic format, you must understand that both storing and sending unprotected files with confidential information has certain risks. By hacking email or infiltrating a company’s computer system, attackers can gain access to sensitive information.
- To protect its users from this, the PDF tool offers multiple options for securing the content of files — from setting a password to prohibiting certain actions.
- Word is not so reliable in this regard. In addition, documents of this format often become carriers of viruses, and therefore, recipients of Word documents are not always willing to open such files.
Now that you know why use a PDF for office workflow, decide on the best PDF generator to edit your files. PDF Flex is a highly efficient online platform that, in addition to opportunity to create PDF and make all sorts of changes to it, offers many other useful features that you will need to manage your documentation:
- Merge and split files;
- Compress PDF;
- Convert PDF to many other formats;
- Sign with e-signature, and much more.
Besides these features, which have already become standard when working with PDF, the platform offers you to communicate with your files using AI. This technology opens up endless possibilities for you to take your office organization to the next level. Choose technologies that shape the future and generously share with others the opportunities to build these new perspectives together!
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