Technical help with documents on our website

PDF files and Acrobat Reader

Most of the documents available on this website are in Portable Document Format (PDF). PDF enables documents originally created in a wide range of programmes to be read by any computer user regardless of the software or platform (Windows or Mac) they have access to.

To open and print a PDF file, all you require is a piece of widely available software called Acrobat Reader. Most new computers come with this software already installed. If you do not have Acrobat Reader you can download it free of charge from the Adobe website.

RTF files

We have posted some documents on the website as ‘Rich Text Format’ (RTF) files. RTF files do not offer quite the same degree of universality for viewing and printing as PDF files. However, RTF files are a useful way of supplying documents which users may want to customise, such as forms, because they retain all the original formatting when opened in, or pasted into a word-processing application.

To use an RTF file you will need a word processing application, such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. We recommend that you save the file before opening it. To do this, click your right mouse button over the link (or click and hold if using a Macintosh) and choose "Save Target As...". You may then open and edit the file within most word-processing applications (ensure that your "Open File" dialogue box is displaying files
of all types).

Copying text in a PDF file

To select text in a PDF file, first make sure the Text Select Tool (marked with an upper-case ‘T’) has been selected on the Acrobat Reader toolbar (the default tool is the hand tool).

Once the tool is selected, your mouse cursor will turn into an ‘I-bar’. Click and drag to select text, then right-click over your selection and choose Copy from the pop-up menu. NB: When viewing a .pdf file in Internet Explorer, the Copy function in the browser's Edit menu is disabled; you must use the pop-up menu to copy your selection.
    

Copying columns of text in a PDF file

The ordinary Acrobat Text Select Tool selects whole rows at a time – even if these span several columns on the page. If you want to copy a column of text, first click and hold the Text Select Tool to access the full set of tool options, and choose the Column Select Tool (an upper-case ‘T’ surrounded by a dotted border).

Click and drag to draw a border around the lines of text you want to select, then right-click and choose Copy from the pop-up menu.