Defra website: Help

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Defra website: Help

Site audience and purpose

This site is intended to cover the information needs of many different potential audiences - the general public, consumers, farmers and growers, the food industry and associated professionals, schoolchildren, students, teachers and academics and so on. It is structured to present simple information first, with an indication of more detail further into the site.

Feedback

We welcome any feedback and suggestions on what you would like us to publish on the site, or on any technical problems you may have with the site. Please e-mail the Defra Webmaster or use the feedback form.

If you have any queries about Defra’s work and policies either e-mail the Helpline or phone between 09:00 and 17:00 Monday - Friday on the local call rate number 08459 335577.

Site navigation

Since there is a large amount and wide variety of information on our site, we recommend using our A-Z index as an aid to finding the information you want.

Page layout - finding your way around; printing

Most pages on the site are in a standard format, similar to the page you are looking at now. This has been tested on a variety of browsers and platforms. It is designed to display best with your monitor set at a screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels, but should generally display without difficulty at lower computer screen resolutions.

On each page which follows this format you can see which subject area of the site you are in (the site's major subject areas are listed on the home page) by looking at the main heading in green at the top right of the screen. Immediately below this heading you will find a number of links to key pages of the site - these should be the same, whichever page you look at.

On many pages you will see a navigation section under the Defra logo, showing you where you are within the hierarchy of the site, and providing links back up to more general pages in the same area. For example:

You are here: Homepage > Animal health & welfare > Bringing pets to Britain > Pet Travel Scheme

The left hand side of the screen will normally contain links to closely related pages on the same subject (these links may sometimes act as an index to information on the same page).

At the foot of the page you will find information on the date the page was published or last modified, and further links to key pages on the site.

Pages in the same current design as this one are designed so that the left-hand navigation bar will not be included when they are printed. This helps to produce a clearer printed result by omitting elements designed primarily for on-screen navigation.

Searching

You can search the text files on the Defra website by using the Search button above to bring up the search screen. Please enter the word or words to look for in the box, then start the search by pressing Enter.

You can look for several words either singly or in combination. You can also exclude words. For example:

to find pages containing information about sheep, enter:

sheep

to find pages containing information about sheep, beef or pigs, enter:

sheep or beef or pigs

to find pages containing information about both sheep and pigs, enter:

sheep and pigs

to find pages containing information about sheep, but not those that contain information about beef, enter:

sheep not beef

Remember that there are many synonyms for the terms used in this service. For example, you might find more information if you searched for sheep or lamb or mutton.

Abbreviations and acronyms

Many Defra documents contain unfamiliar abbreviations and acronyms. We hope our glossary of abbreviations and acronyms will help you.

Downloading files or documents

You are advised to save large files or files that you need to work on (interactive PDF forms, Excel or Word documents) onto your computer.

On your PC using Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser:

  • right click the link
  • slect "save target as"
  • choose a suitable location on your PC

On your PC using Netscape web browser:

  • right click on the link
  • choose "savelink as"
  • choose a suitable locaiton on your PC

File Formats

This site principally uses files of the following five types:
(Users will need to have the correct software loaded on their machines to make full use of the information available.)

HTML

HTML is the basic file format used on the Internet, this page is in HTML format. It is our policy to make as much information as possible in this format. Sometimes, for technical reasons, some data may be made available in the following alternative formats.

PDF

Documents marked PDF or [pdf logo] are saved in Portable Document Format (PDF). To read them you will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader. The Acrobat Reader software is available for downloading free of charge.

Viewers with visual difficulties may find it useful to investigate services provided by Adobe to improve the accessibility of Adobe Acrobat documents - http://access.adobe.com

Note: We do not normally publish scanned documents but very occasionally this is unavoidable. We will try to make such documents as accessible as possible (including through automatic recognition of scanned text) but if you are unable to read any scanned documents, do contact us and we will endeavour to provide the material in a more accessible format.

DOC

DOC is the file type for documents created using Microsoft WORD. This is a widely used word processing package.

XLS

XLS is the file type for documents created using Microsoft EXCEL. This is a widely used spreadsheet package.

CSV

CSV stands for Comma Separated Values and is the spreadsheet equivalent of .txt for word processors. You can cut and paste a CSV file into the spreadsheet of your choice or download to your PC.

See also:

Page last modified: 08 September 2007

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs