Okay, so you ever have one of those days? All you want to do is make a PDF/X-1a of a PDF but it just won't seem to go. You get some error about wrong PDF version? Huh?? Whadda ya' mean? Or, ever have a PDF/X-1a that you edit and then won't verify again when you save it? Well here's the deal... Acrobat so conveniently changes the version of the PDF when you perform a Save or Save As operation. Thankfully Pitstop has two ways of dealing with this. First, By default Pitstop Pro does not alter Acrobats ability to change PDF versions when saving. But you can change that! There is a preference option under Enfocus Pitstop Preferences "tool" tab that lets you prevent this from happening.

Just so everyone is clear here, using these action lists to chage the PDF version does only that. It does NOT convert the PDF to the respective version. For that you would need to use the optimizer built into Adobe Acrobat. It would be entirely possible to create a PDF out of Adobe Illustrator CS2 or InDesign CS2 that contains transparency. The resulting PDF would be PDF v1.6. Then if you were to use PitStop to change the PDF version to v1.3 you would have a messed up PDF! Remember, transparency does not exist in PDF v1.3. So it can be a rather dangerous tool if not used properly. The "messed up" part is that you have a PDF with veresion specific attributes, but a version that does not support those attributes. Imagine placing this theoretical PDF into Quark. Quark would die! So be careful!
What it is What it should be!

 

So I said there were two ways. Your right, I did. The second way to to use an Action List. You can download one from the Action List Exchange or you can make your own. For making PDF/X-1a:2001 you want to use PDF v1.3. But for PDF/X-1a:2003 you need PDF v1.4.