Format guide
Portable Document Format
PDF is the universal document format for fixed-layout content, invoices, contracts, scanned documents, e-books, forms. Created by Adobe in 1993 and made an open ISO standard in 2008, PDF preserves exact layout, fonts, and images across every device. Files can be searchable text, scanned images, or both. Most modern PDFs include a text layer that copy/paste and search work against.
How to open a PDF file
Every modern browser opens PDFs natively. Acrobat Reader is free; macOS Preview, Windows Edge, and ChromeOS all open PDFs without extra software. For editing, Adobe Acrobat Pro or open-source PDFsam are common.
Primary use
Documents that need to look identical on every device.
Convert other formats to PDF
Convert PDF to other formats
Looking for something else? Browse the full list of 192 converters.