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Using PDF as a non-editable business document standard

Submitted by Dave on Thu, 19/11/2015 - 01:02

In a previous blog post, we highlighted how proprietary fonts keep businesses locked-in to using expensive Microsoft products—and how using openly-licensed fonts is an effective remedy. In this blog entry, we'll examine how the common practice of exchanging documents in editable format—when there is no actual reason to do so—similarly creates a hurdle for businesses looking to replace Microsoft Office with LibreOffice.

A common question raised by business owners investigating LibreOffice is "how can I work with external parties sending documents in Microsoft Office format?" This question arises from a concern of being unable to open documents sent by users outside of the business. These are usually attached to email, or in shared cloud storage—and are typically in Microsoft Word or Excel format.

In response, we could highlight LibreOffice's outstanding support for Microsoft Office-format files. LibreOffice also has better compatibility for older Microsoft file formats than Microsoft's own products—particularly those formats which Microsoft has deliberately stopped supporting to keep businesses paying for expensive software upgrades. However, while LibreOffice will generally open Microsoft Office files with absolutely no problem, this skirts around the real issue: the vast majority of electronic documents a business receives from external parties do not need to be editable—and therefore do not need to be in Microsoft Office format to begin with.

This practice is observed on a daily basis. Invoices, meeting minutes and agendas, reports, policies, vendor pricing, events information, and many other examples are sent in Word or Excel format—when there is zero requirement for editing by the recipient. In fact, there are many scenarios in which a recipient's ability to edit a document is undesirable—especially if the contents are of a commercially or legally sensitive nature.

Accepting documents that are clearly intended to be non-editable—but sent in Microsoft Office format—needlessly sustains long-standing problems:

  • Increased business software costs—arising from an incorrect belief that Microsoft Office must be purchased simply to handle documents sent by external parties
  • Continued incompatibility errors—arising from multiple versions of Microsoft Office with wide variance in feature support
  • Lost staff productivity—arising from having to work around file format incompatibilities and missing features

The solution is simple. First, if there is no requirement for documents to be editable—and this is true for the vast majority of cases—ask the sender to use PDF format. If you deal with a certain external party on a regular basis (for example, a product vendor), recommend that they make sending documents in PDF format a standard business process. If there are public-facing systems for your business that require external parties to submit documents to you (for example, job applications ), make PDF the expected file format—and update public-facing guidance accordingly. The cost to the sender to use PDF is negligible—but the cost to your business of needlessly maintaining Microsoft Office is considerable by comparison.

For documents you send to external parties, determine if there is a requirement for the recipient to edit the file. If there isn't, then send documents in PDF format. PDF export is built into LibreOffice and requires no additional software:

Exchanging non-editable documents in PDF format has the following advantages:

  • Documents will open exactly as authored—with no incompatibility errors, missing features, or broken formatting.
  • PDF is an open, industry-standardised format (like ODF). Consequently, a wide variety of free software is available to open PDFs with perfect fidelity.

You'll soon discover that only a tiny fraction of documents exchanged with external parties have any editing requirement. By mandating PDF for non-editable documents and including this in a migration strategy, you'll significantly increase the likelihood of making your LibreOffice adoption a success.