Adobe Acrobat (PDF) document viewing

The Ministry of Education Web site contains a number of Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) documents, which are designed for high resolution viewing and printing of documents, reports and forms. For you to use these documents, certain software from Adobe must be installed on your computer.

There are two ways to view Adobe Acrobat documents, using the Acrobat Plug-In within a web browser, or by downloading the document and opening the .pdf file with Adobe Acrobat Reader. Both the Acrobat Plug-In and Acrobat Reader are available from Adobe's Web site at no charge. However, the software must be correctly installed and your web browser software correctly configured in order to successfully view the documents.

In your Web browser, click on the link to the .pdf document
Do you get a "missing file" or 404 error on the Web Page?	Yes	Contact Webmaster with the address (URL) of the Web page and the name of the document you are trying to view.
No
If you are shown a dialog box asking you to either Open the document or Save to disk, select Open.
Does the .pdf document open properly in your browser window?	Yes	The .pdf document is OK. If it didn't work previously, it may have been because of an interrupted Internet connection.
No
If you get garbage characters on the screen, or if your Browser prompts you that you need a new plug-in, Cancel and download the .pdf file to your disk.		Click here for instructions for forcing a .pdf file to download.
Open the downloaded file with the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader		if you get an error message saying "Document contains commands that cannot be interpreted by this version" then you probably have an old version of Acrobat reader. See Version Incompatibilities
Does the .pdf document open properly in Acrobat Reader?	Yes	The .pdf document is fine, but your Acrobat Web plug-in is not properly installed. See Abobe, or your Web Browser manufacturer for instructions and reinstall the Acrobat plug-in.
No
Test that you have the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader correctly installed by opening a different .pdf document such as the License_Reader.pdf file that installed on your hard drive along with Adobe Acrobat Reader. Repeat the download of the .pdf file to your disk and open with Acrobat Reader.		Reinstall Acrobat if necessary. If Acrobat Reader does not function properly on your machine after re-installation, contact your hardware support resources.
Does the .pdf document open properly in Acrobat Reader?	Yes	The document is fine but your Acrobat Web plug-in is not properly installed. See Adobe for instructions and reinstall Acrobat from Adobe's Web site Note: Something may be interrupting your internet connection if the same file works on some downloads and not on others.
No
Contact Webmaster with the address (URL) of the Ministry of Education Web page and the name of the document you are trying to view.

If the .pdf document does not appear on your web browser screen properly, download it as a .pdf file to your hard drive, and open it with Acrobat Reader (instructions). If it opens successfully with Acrobat Reader, then the problem is with your web browser and Acrobat Plug-In configuration, not with the .pdf document.

Note that the Ministry's web page programming has no effect one way or the other on your computer's ability to open the document once it is downloaded to your hard drive.