The authors review the requirements of long-term archiving that led into the initiative to create a standard for electronic document archiving. The current status of the PDF/A standardization activity is given. The standard itself, its goals, and its usability are described in detail. The differences between traditional PDF and PDF/A are explained. Existing solutions and a potential validation process are discussed. Special emphasis is placed on how PDF/A can be used to create full-text searchable PDF files from scanned documents, and on how such documents can be created in a compact and easily accessible way (e.g. via internet). This includes the embedding of OCR results, and the compression of scanned page images using MRC (Mixed Raster Content) techniques. Certain application areas are listed, ranging from processing scanned paper documents to workflows that deal with digital born documents. An outlook is given on future standards based on PDF, like ISO 32000 and PDF/A-2.