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PDF Help :: how to view Acrobat PDF files

• What are PDF files?
• How can I view PDF files?
• Acrobat Reader and accessibility
• Problems? Try this first
• Problems viewing PDF files after installing Acrobat Reader
• Problems printing PDF files
• Still having problems?

What are PDF files?

PDF files are text files (which may contain images) where the layout is fixed, making them especially suitable for documents which are to be printed. A number of documents on this website may be provided as a PDF file. These files are indicated with the PDF icon shown.

How can I view PDF files?

To be able to view a PDF file you must have Adobe Acrobat^® Reader^® installed on your computer. You can Download Adobe Acrobat Reader (external link) free from Adobe's website. The Adbobe Reader Support pages (external link) provide advice on downloading and installing Acrobat Reader. There are also links from this page to troubleshooting guides.

Acrobat Reader and accessibility

The latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader has many accessibility features that enable those using screen readers or assistive technology to better access information within PDF files. Detailed information on this is available on the Acrobat accessibility pages (external link) of Adobe's website. There is also an accessible download page (external link) on Adobe's website, with links to the latest versions of Adobe Reader.

Problems? Try this first

Try saving the file to your hard disk and then opening and printing it from there.

To save a file to disk, right-click on the link and select 'Save Target As..' or 'Save Link As..' and make a note of where you have saved it. Once the file has been saved to disk, you can open it from there and view and print directly using Acrobat Reader.

Problems viewing PDF files

Problems viewing PDF files can occur if you are using older versions of Acrobat Reader or an old version of a web browser, and upgrading one or both of these may be sufficient to fix the problem.

There are specific problems associated with viewing PDF files in Internet Explorer, even if you have Acrobat Reader and are usually able to view PDF files. The Microsoft website has a number of possible solutions to this problem (external link) (Q177321).

Problems printing PDF files

PDF files may be displayed within the browser window or a separate Acrobat Reader window may open to display a file. If you are viewing the file within the browser window you should use the Print button on the Acrobat toolbar, and not the browser's print button. Before printing the file make sure that it has all downloaded by scrolling to the end of the document. (Some PDF files on our website are quite large and may take some time to download completely.)

Still having problems?

If you have tried the solutions above and are still unable to view and/or print PDF files from this website, please contact us and let us know. If you can provide us with as many of the following details as possible it will help us to improve our website. (You can copy and paste the list below into an email.)

• Operating system. e.g. Win XP or Mac OSX
• Browser and version e.g. Internet Explorer version 5.5 (Under 'Help', 'About' menu)
• Version of Acrobat Reader e.g 3, 4, 5 or 6 (Under the 'Help' menu)
• Did the file try to open in the browser window or did Acrobat Reader open a separate window to display the file?
• What happened when you tried to open/print the PDF file? e.g it appeared to have downloaded but a blank page was displayed.