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Printed documents such as manuals or forms (such as government tax forms) do not display well on a computer screen. This is because the printing is often quite small and because most printed pages or forms have portrait orientation (they are higher than wide) while most computer screens have landscape orientation (they are wider than high).
The Adobe company developed a file display format called PDF (Portable Document Format) which enables such printed materials to be displayed conveniently on a typical computer screen and to be printed if desired.
To display a PDF file one must have the program called Acrobat installed on his or her computer. This can be downloaded from the World Wide Web and installed on ones computer at no cost. Since many computer progam manuals, manuals for such things as appliances and many government forms are made available in PDF format, it is important that anyone using the Web have the Acrobat program on his or her computer.
The following instructions show how to download and install Acrobat. (You may wish to print this page of instructions to have them available.)
- Start up your browser, type in the address below and depress the Enter key to go to the Adobe Acrobat Reader page. Alternately, since you are now using your browser you can just click on the address below to go to this page.
www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
- Scroll down to the box labelled Step 1. Choose which language you wish to use and then the platform (that is, which operating system is running your computer). Click on the For personal use Download button.
- When you get a message asking whether you wish to download or save the file, click on Save. Then in the Save As.. window browse to find Desktop and click on it to select it. (If it is not in the list, click on the little down arrow at the right side of the list box and then scroll until Desktop appears in the list.) Click on Save.
- When the downloading of the program is complete, click on the Close button to close down the Save window and then shut down the browser. Make sure no programs are running on the computer but make sure that you are connected to the Internet.
- You should now have a new temporary icon on your computer desktop called AdbeDnldm... Double click on it to cause the Adobe Download Manager program to run. It will start the actual download of the Acrobat installation program.
- When the installation program has downloaded you may get a message indicating that a previous version of Acrobat may be uninstalled. Just click on Yes to continue.
- You should now have the Acrobat Setup window showing. Click on Next.
- The next window will suggest a default installation folder on your computer. Just click on Next.
- The next window will indicate that installation is complete and that you will have to restart your computer. Select that you do wish to restart your computer now and click on Finish. Your computer should close down and then automatically restart.
- You should now have the actual Acrobat Reader icon on your computer desktop. Leave it but do a single click on the AdbeDnldm.. icon added above and depress the Delete key to delete it. When asked select that you do wish to delete it even though it is a program. (You no longer need this Download Manager program since you have already downloaded and installed Acrobat.)
Now that the Acrobat program is installed on your computer, it will automatically start up and display any manual or form that is downloaded when you click on its link in a web page.
Doug van Vianen
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