What are PDF files?
Frequently, the information we want to share with you is in the form of a word-processed document that was originally created to be printed out, and these can sometimes be very long; or it may originally have been on a spreadsheet or slide presentation in a format that not everybody can access.
It is possible to turn these into ordinary web pages, but it can be very time-consuming and it can be quite difficult to keep them looking the same as the original, especially when we need to take different-sized monitors and different web browsers into consideration.
Web pages are also sometimes not easy to print out - we've all been faced with printers asking for special sizes of paper, pages missing an inch or so of text from the right-hand margin, or a whole page of A4 with just one line of print!
More for smaller screensPDF - Portable Document Format - files solve all these problems. Almost any kind of document - word processor, spreadsheet, slide presentation - can be converted in a couple of clicks to an identical, quick-to-load and easily printable online version that can be accessed by any computer using any operating system. You can read what the format's creators say about it on the Adobe website.
Users do need Adobe® Reader® installed on their computer, but this is quick, free and comes from a large and reputable company, so we believe you may download it with complete confidence; this will allow you to access PDF documents from any website.
