Reading Adobe Acrobat
Documents

Files ending in .PDF are Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format files. Acrobat files can be read on your computer screen or printed using an Adobe Acrobat "Reader" available free from Adobe. If you wish to create your own Acrobat files, you will need to purchase the commercial Adobe Acrobat package.

We suggest that you configure your Adobe Acrobat Reader as a plug-in application for your World Wide Web browser. This can be accomplished with Adobe Acrobat Reader version 3.0 or higher, and Netscape (2.0 or higher), Internet Explorer (3.0 or higher), or compatible, browsers. This allows the reader software to integrate closely with the browser and allows you to begin to read the PDF file while it is downloading. Version 3.0 or higher of the Adobe Acrobat reader also permits reading of PDF pages side-by-side, which is important in reading the Federal Employee Health Benefits Guide.

In order to use the Acrobat Reader as a Web browser plug-in, you will need to copy the appropriate file to your browsers Plug-in folder. If you are using a Netscape Navigator, the Acrobat installer attempts to install the plug-in for you.

To manually install the Web browser plug-in (Windows):

1. Open File Manager or Windows Explorer.
2. Locate the Acrobat3\Read16\Browser folder (or Acrobat\Read32\Browser).
3. Copy the NPPDF32.dll or NPPDF16.dll file to your Web browsers Plug-in folder.

1. Open the Web Browser Plug-in folder within the Adobe Acrobat 3.0 folder.
2. Copy the PDFViewer plug-in to your Web browsers Plug-in folder.

Run <installdir>/Browsers/netscape.

Note that with versions of the Reader prior to 3.0, you cannot save a PDF file to your local disk after you have read it. You had to have the commercial Adobe Acrobat software in order to save the file. This limitation was removed with version 3.0 of the Reader software.

• Viewing Acrobat Files with Screen Readers (Adobe Systems, Inc., Pages)
• To OPM Home Page

Updated 11 Feb 1997