PDF (Portable Document Format) is one of the most popular and widely used document or file formats. Microsoft PowerPoint is also quite popular.
In this article, we intend to list and expand on the reasons PDF is a better format than PowerPoint in most document use cases.
Why PDF is Better Than PowerPoint
1. PDF Is Portable
You may have figured this out from the expansion of the initialism: PDF means Portable Document format. PDF is incredibly portable or small compared to most file formats. With PDF files, you get to create and transfer documents containing lots of information using small file sizes.
For reasons bordering on portability, PDF is often used for sharing documents and even scanned images in emails and distributing documents in online channels or platforms.
2. PDF Is Compatible
PDF exhibits universal compatibility in terms of support on devices and platforms. Adobe made PDF an open standard in 2008, so most applications have been opening and dealing with PDF files for a long time. For example, most web browsers now come with functions that allow users to load and view PDFs on the go; all mobile devices come with preinstalled apps for opening PDFs; and so on.
You can use a single PDF file across all devices or platforms without having to worry about dependencies. That PDF looks the same way everywhere. Its contents—texts, images, etc.—are rendered the same way everywhere. With PDFs, information gets conveyed in exactly the manner you want regardless of the platform or device involved.
3. PDF Is Resilient and Reliable
The PDF file format is incredibly resilient and reliable. When you create a PDF file, you can rest easy: You are assured that after several transfers involving this file across different devices or platforms and even changes in name, the file is likely to stay in its original state or composition. PDF files rarely fall to corruption.
4. PDF Is Secure
PDFs, by design, are difficult to edit. Only a limited number of people have access to software that allows them to edit PDF files. Even without specialized protections, PDF is a good format for holding content you do want people to modify.
If you are willing to go a step further to protect or secure the content in a PDF file, then you may be pleased to know that the format provides many schemes that allow you to do precisely that.
For example,
- If you want to prevent people from copying the text in your PDF document, you can lock the content in a way that makes text highlighting impossible.
- If you do not want unauthorized persons to open a PDF, you can set a password to encrypt or lock the file.
5. PDF Is Easy to Make
You can create PDFs directly from literally almost any document format. You can obtain a PDF from PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Keynote, and similar files. You can convert those files directly to a PDF, or you can export them to PDF. PDF is almost always an option for file saving in programs.
You cannot convert a Word file to PowerPoint directly, for example, even in the Microsoft Word program. Similarly, you cannot obtain a Word file from a PowerPoint. But you can obtain PDFs from both Word and PowerPoint documents directly in their respective programs.
Convinced?
To convert your PowerPoint to PDF, you may want to check out our online PowerPoint to PDF and PPTX to PDF converters. With this free service, you can get a PDF from a PowerPoint file quickly and enjoy all the benefits associated with PDFs.
