Jump to main content.

Adobe Acrobat File Information

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.

Installing Adobe Acrobat

The Adobe Acrobat Home Page Exiting EPA contains detailed information on this product, and allows you to download free copies of Acrobat for Windows, Macintosh, or UNIX systems.

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.

If you have an Internet browser installed on your system at the time that you install Adobe Acrobat, it should automatically install itself as a helper application in the browser. You will know that it is properly installed as a helper application if you can view the PDF file in the browser window, with a single row of special Acrobat buttons along the top of the viewing screen.

If Acrobat does not install itself automatically as a helper application for your web browser, you can also do this manually by copying the appropriate file to your browser’s Plug-in folder.

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 browser’s Plug-in folder.
To install the Web browser plug-in (Macintosh):
  1. Open the Web Browser Plug-in folder within the Adobe Acrobat 3.0 folder.
  2. Copy the PDFViewer plug-in to your Web browser’s Plug-in folder.
To install the Web browser plug-in (UNIX):
Run <installdir>/Browsers/netscape.
For more information, see the Adobe Acrobat Installation for UNIX guide.

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.
Download Adobe Acrobat Reader Software Exiting EPA


Printing Adobe Acrobat Files

When printing Adobe Acrobat PDF files from within your web browser, do NOT use the web browser print facility. Instead, use the print button at the left end of the special Adobe Acrobat tool bar, which appears immediately above the viewing window. See illustration below for location of this print button.
Illustration of Acrobat tool bar


Accessibility of Adobe Acrobat Files

Adobe has set up a web page to discuss accessibility issues with Adobe Acrobat files. Visit http://access.adobe.com/ Exiting EPA for more information on how to make .pdf files accessible to screen reader programs.

Office of Research & Development | National Risk Management Research Laboratory

Local Navigation

Jump to main content.