Australian Government, Department of Veterans' Affairs
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PDF help page

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About PDF documents

Some content on the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA) website is provided in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF).

PDF documents are an ideal format for downloading and printing, but you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader on your system in order to view and print PDF files. Acrobat Reader is available free from the Adobe Systems Incorporated website. See below for information about downloading the free Acrobat Reader from the Adobe website. If you wish to download a copy of the free Acrobat Reader you may choose to follow the steps below. Please read the following two notes first.

Note 1: DVA makes no recommendation about Adobe or any of its products. The following steps are provided solely for the information of those unfamiliar with PDF files and who might benefit from some assistance in obtaining the free Acrobat Reader offered by Adobe on its website.

Note 2: PDF files are not fully accessible to those who use assistive technology such as screen readers. Adobe offers a "plug-in" to convert PDF files to HTML or text "on-the-fly". Users who might wish to take advantage of this facility do so without any warranty from DVA that the result will be accessible. More information about the plug-in is available from the Adobe accessibility website at http://access.adobe.com.

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Downloading Acrobat Reader from the Adobe website.

To download a free copy of the latest version of Acrobat Reader, visit the Adobe website.

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Using Acrobat Reader

In the web page that has a link to a PDF file, select or click on the link. Depending on your system setting, the browser will:

  • go straight to the PDF document, which can then be printed or browsed online, OR
  • open a "dialogue box" that gives you the option of opening the PDF file from its present location for immediate viewing, or saving the file to your hard disk.

If you save the file to your hard disk, it can be viewed any time without having to return to the website. Open Acrobat Reader and choose "File - Open ..." then proceed as you would when opening any other type of document. You can browse through the document onscreen, or print it so you have a paper copy. Alternatively, you might wish to print only a part of the document. See below for information about printing PDF documents.

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Printing PDF documents

To print a PDF document, choose the Printer button on the Acrobat Reader toolbar or use the Printer button on your web browser toolbar. Alternatively, choose "File - Print ..." from the standard menu bar. Proceed as you would when printing any other type of document.

IMPORTANT: Before printing, take a note of the number of pages in the document as some PDF documents can be quite large. There is a page count at the left of the "status bar" at the bottom of the Acrobat Reader screen (e.g. 1 of 20). You may prefer to print only part of the document that is relevant to your needs.

Print settings

After choosing one of the print buttons referred to above, a "dialogue box" titled "Print" or something similar will open on the screen. This gives you a number of printing options that will differ depending on your system configuration. Choose the print settings you wish.

At the least, there will be the option of printing the whole document, the current page or a selection of pages (e.g. pages from 4-10). You should also be able to select print quality. Note that if you have difficulty printing the document, try reducing the print quality (i.e. dots per inch or dpi), but note that this could affect the quality of any graphics in the document.

The dialogue box should also allow you to select the number of copies you want to print (default is usually 1), and whether to print to a new file on your hard drive, and/or shrink the contents of the screen document to fit the paper size in your printer. There may be other options available. If in doubt, try the online "Help" by choosing the "Window" drop-down menu on the Acrobat Reader toolbar and selecting "Reader Help".

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