Help viewing PDFs

To view any file in Portable Document Format (PDF) downloaded from this site, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader. The programme is freely available if you do not already have it.

Get Adobe Acrobat Reader

Question
How do I get the Reader program?
Answer
You can download the Adobe Acrobat Reader free software for viewing and printing Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files from the link below.
>Download Adobe Reader

Accessibility

Question
Is there anything I can do to make documents more accessible?
Answer
Useful information about services to make Acrobat documents more accessible is provided on Adobe’s website.
>Adobe Acrobat Support
>Adobe pages on accessibility

Troubleshooting

Question
Sometimes a PDF will open but only a blank page is visible
Answer
This may be because the view is zoomed into a blank section of the document. Use the dropdown view menu (bottom left hand corner of the screen) to select a suitable view – 100% or ‘Fit Width’ are usually best.

Question
Still having difficulties
Answer
If you are still having problems, and are using Microsoft Explorer 4 or 5 for the PC, try clicking on the link to the PDF file you want to see with your right mouse button. This will bring up a small menu – if you select Save Target As from this you will be able to save the file and open it outside the browser. If you are using Netscape 4 the option will be Save Link As – this has the same function.

Searching PDFs

Question
How to search within a PDF
Answer
When you click on the link to a PDF, it will open in your browser window. A toolbar will appear below the address bar, featuring a number of tools to help you view and search the document. Running your mouse over the icons, without clicking, will tell you what each of them does. Especially useful is the Find Tool (a pair of binoculars) – click on the Find icon to search the document for a word or phrase. Click the next icon to the right to search for further occurences of the word or phrase.