Word processing files

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Preservation Format

Open Document Format; PDF/A

Access Format

PDF

Normalization tool

Xena or OpenOffice Writer

Comments

• Normalization to Portable Document Format/Archival (PDF/A) may be an acceptable preservation strategy in addition to normalization to ODF using Xena.
  • For more information on the PDF/A format see Library of Congress Sustainability of Digital Formats: PDF/A-1.
  • A list of tools used to convert files to PDF format is available at Codswallop technology + productivity blog.
  • PDF/A normalization of MS Word files is somewhat problematic because best results are achieved from within the native application - i.e. MS Office running in MS Windows. Archivematica does not support either Windows or MS Office since these are proprietary software packages.
• For ODF conversion, Xena may be preferable since it also normalizes embedded objects such as image files and spreadsheets.