Digital documents now span business records, cloud software, public services, PDFs and electronic signatures. The figures below distinguish survey populations, activity measures and company-reported estimates across the United Kingdom, the European Union and worldwide Adobe services.
Key Digital Document Statistics
These are the most useful headline figures from the available evidence:
- In 2025–2026, 86% of UK businesses handled some type of digitised data.
- In 2025–2026, 93% of UK businesses with employees handled some digitised data.
- In 2025–2026, 67% of UK businesses handled digitised personal data other than employee data.
- In 2025–2026, 25% of UK businesses handling digitised data also analysed data.
- In 2025–2026, 94% of UK information-and-communication businesses handled digitised data.
- In 2025, 52.7% of EU enterprises used paid cloud computing services.
- In 2025, 85.2% of EU cloud-using enterprises used paid cloud services for email.
- In 2025, 71.5% of EU cloud-using enterprises used paid cloud services for file storage.
- In 2025, 71.9% of EU people aged 16–74 used public-authority websites or apps.
- In 2025, 44.2% of EU people aged 16–74 used online public-authority services to obtain information.
- In 2025, 38.2% of EU people aged 16–74 submitted tax declarations online.
- In 2025, 36.6% of EU people aged 16–74 received official communication or documents online.
- In 2023, Adobe estimated that more than 3 trillion PDF documents existed worldwide.
- In the year reported by Adobe in 2023, more than 8 billion electronic and digital signature transactions were processed.
- By June 2023, Adobe Scan users had created 2.5 billion documents worldwide.
- In 2025–2026, 99% of UK small businesses handled digitised data.
- In 2025, 79.2% of Finnish enterprises used paid cloud computing services.
- In 2025, 17.8% of Bulgarian enterprises used paid cloud computing services.
Contents
- How widely UK businesses handle digitised data
- Business data types and analysis trends
- Cloud storage, office software and email
- Online government document use
- PDF and electronic-signature scale
- Adoption by business size and country
Digital Document Statistics: How Widely UK Businesses Handle Digitised Data
The UK Business Data Survey 2026 reports self-described business handling of digitised data. Its 2025–2026 estimate covers 4,450 businesses, so it measures reported participation rather than a census of documents.
| Period | UK businesses handling digitised data |
|---|---|
| 2020–2021 | 81% |
| 2021–2022 | 85% |
| 2023–2024 | 77% |
| 2025–2026 | 86% |
The source notes that question wording and survey conditions can affect comparisons across waves. The latest survey also found that 93% of UK businesses with employees handled some digitised data, while 79% handled personal or non-personal employee data.
Among all UK businesses in 2025–2026, 56% handled non-personal data other than employee data and 67% handled digitised personal data other than employee data. These categories overlap with the broader digitised-data measure and exclude employee data where stated. (UK Business Data Survey 2026)
Digital Document Data Trends: Types of Data and Analysis
The survey provides a more detailed view of businesses handling digitised data, excluding employee data from the conditional breakdown:
- 39% handled both personal and non-personal data.
- 27% handled only personal data.
- 17% handled only non-personal data.
These percentages are calculated among businesses handling digitised data, not among every UK business. The survey also reports that 25% of businesses handling digitised data analysed data in 2025–2026, compared with 21% in 2023–2024 and 26% in 2020–2021.
Sector results show how uneven digitised-data handling can be. In 2025–2026, 94% of information-and-communication businesses and 94% of professional, scientific and technical businesses handled digitised data, compared with 90% of finance and insurance businesses.
For non-personal data, the sector figures were 79% for information and communication, 71% for professional, scientific and technical businesses, 69% for finance and insurance, 61% for real estate, 45% for wholesale, retail and motor-vehicle repair, and 37% for transport and storage. (UK Business Data Survey 2026)
Cloud Document Workflows: Storage, Office Software and Email
Cloud adoption is an enabling measure for digital documents, not a direct count of files. Eurostat’s 2025 enterprise ICT survey generally covers EU enterprises with at least 10 employees or self-employed persons.
In 2025, 52.7% of EU enterprises used paid cloud computing services, 7.4 percentage points higher than in 2023. Among enterprises using paid cloud services, the most document-relevant purposes were:
| Paid-cloud purpose | Share of EU cloud-using enterprises, 2025 |
|---|---|
| 85.2% | |
| Office software | 71.7% |
| File storage | 71.5% |
| Security software | 65.5% |
| Finance or accounting software | 58.2% |
| Enterprise database hosting | 45.5% |
| Enterprise-resource-planning software | 30.1% |
The same cloud-using population reported 28.2% using cloud computing power for their own software, 27.9% using cloud customer-relationship-management software and 26.1% using cloud platforms for application development, testing or deployment. The percentages in this breakdown use cloud-using enterprises as the denominator, so they should not be read as shares of all EU enterprises. (53% EU enterprises used paid cloud services in 2025)
Online Government Services and Digital Document Use
Eurostat’s e-government measures cover people aged 16–74 in the EU and refer to experiences during the preceding 12 months. Website or app use is broader than document handling, while downloading or printing official forms is not purely digital use.
In 2025, 71.9% of EU people aged 16–74 used a public-authority website or app. That was 1.9 percentage points higher than in 2024 and 4.3 percentage points higher than in 2022.
| Online public-authority activity | EU people aged 16–74, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Obtained information | 44.2% |
| Accessed personal information | 41.3% |
| Submitted tax declarations | 38.2% |
| Downloaded or printed official forms | 36.7% |
| Received official communication or documents | 36.6% |
| Requested official documents or certificates | 20.8% |
| Requested benefits or entitlements | 18.1% |
For comparison, Eurostat reported that 69% used a public-authority website or app in 2023, 40% downloaded or printed official forms and 29% submitted tax declarations. These are separate survey-year observations, not a claim that every activity followed the same trend. (E-government services used by 72% of people in the EU; How do people interact with public authorities online?)
PDF and Electronic-Signature Statistics
PDF is one of the clearest global indicators of digital-document scale, but the available figures here are Adobe estimates or product activity rather than a worldwide file census.
Adobe estimated that more than 3 trillion PDF documents existed worldwide in 2023. In the year reported by Adobe in 2023, customers opened more than 400 billion PDFs in Adobe products and Adobe processed more than 8 billion electronic and digital signature transactions.
Adobe also reported more than 150 million Adobe Scan downloads by June 2023 and said Adobe Scan users had created 2.5 billion documents by that date. Downloads do not equal unique active users or documents scanned, and the document definition is Adobe’s. (Celebrating 30 Years of Digital Transformation with Adobe Acrobat)
Digital Document Adoption by UK Business Size and Country
UK business-size estimates for 2025–2026 show high reported digitised-data handling across every listed group:
| UK business group | Handling digitised data |
|---|---|
| Small businesses | 99% |
| Medium businesses | 99% |
| Large businesses | 96% |
| Micro businesses | 92% |
| Sole traders | 83% |
The survey also reports that 79% of large UK businesses with employees and 75% of micro businesses with employees handled digitised employee data. The large-business employee-data figure conflicts with another detailed sentence in the same report, which reports 95%; it should therefore be checked against the accompanying table before publication and should not be treated as settled.
Country-level cloud adoption varies substantially in Eurostat’s 2025 enterprise measure. The figures below use the enterprise populations defined by the enterprise ICT survey and are not directly comparable with the UK business survey’s digitised-data question.
| Country | Enterprises using paid cloud computing services, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Finland | 79.2% |
| Italy | 75.6% |
| Malta | 74.9% |
| Romania | 24.9% |
| Bulgaria | 17.8% |
These observations describe paid cloud use, not all digital-document activity. The difference in scope matters: a business may handle digitised data without using paid cloud services, while cloud services can support email, software and databases beyond documents. (UK Business Data Survey 2026; 53% EU enterprises used paid cloud services in 2025)