Many of the official documents on the Alberta Advanced Education website have been formatted using the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Official documents, as well documents where the final printed format of output are important, have been saved as PDF files on our website.

Advanced Education develops/posts PDF documents that can be viewed using Adobe's Acrobat Reader, version 4.0 or higher. To get the most recent version of Acrobat Reader, visit Adobe's download centre.

Some of our visitors have encountered problems viewing/printing PDF documents. We have developed the following tips to help visitors overcome some common problems that have been encountered with PDF files.

Problems with PDF files fall into three main categories:

a)	Problems related to the size of PDF documents
b)	Problems viewing PDF documents on screen
c)	Problems printing PDF documents

Each of these topics is discussed below.

A. Problems Related to the Size of PDF Documents

1)	PDF documents take longer to load than normal HTML web documents. A one page PDF document is usually much larger than one page of HTML text. The Advanced Education website currently hundreds of PDF documents: •  Many are over 100 kilobytes in size. •  Some are larger than half a megabyte in size; and,
2)	The speed with which your computer loads PDF documents is highly dependant on the speed of your connection. On a 56K (56,000 bits per second) connection, the minimum download times for files as large as indicated above are: •  1 minute, 10 seconds for a half megabyte file; and, •  15 seconds for a 100 kilobyte file. Actual download times tend to be longer than the minimums indicated above. Network transport overhead (such as packet headers), the time it takes to establish a connection, and network congestion (i.e. the general level of traffic over the portion of the Internet that connects you to our website) all increase the time it takes for PDF files to be transferred across the Internet. As well, some time must be allowed for Acrobat Reader to load if you have not yet viewed any other PDF documents.
3)	Normally you cannot see even part of a PDF document until the entire file has been downloaded by your browser (often, you can see portions of an HTML page, even while some of the graphical elements for the page are still loading). For that reason, when you link to a large PDF document, your browser may appear to hang while the document is loading.

The bottom-line is that it will take considerably longer to load a large PDF document than it would to load an equivalent HTML page.

B. Problems Viewing PDF Documents On Screen

Some computers have difficulty properly displaying PDF documents on screen. In some cases, the difficulty arises because of the video display card/ or the drivers for it. In other cases, the problem is a little less clear. Here are a few strategies that might work if this is an issue with your machine.

1)	Check to see that you are using the latest version of Acrobat Reader (5.0). Even though documents should (in theory) be viewable on earlier versions of Reader when created in Acrobat 5, in practice there are problems from time to time. To check the version that you're using, open Acrobat Reader, then click on "Help", then "About Acrobat Reader..." . If you are using an older version of Acrobat Reader, try installing the newest version, available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
2)	Try linking to one of the documents directly. You can view the location of a document in most browsers by holding the pointer over the link on the referring page, then viewing the status bar at the bottom of the page.
3)	Once you have loaded the document, try adjusting the zoom percentage on the document (lower left hand side of the screen). Sometimes the document becomes viewable when you increase/decrease the zoom percentage.
4)	Try saving the documents to your hard-drive, possibly even to your desktop. To do so, go to the calling page (that is, the page on which the link to the PDF document appears), then right click on the link to the documents you are trying to view and select "Save the link as". After that, try loading the document from your hard-drive. That way, it will display directly from Adobe Acrobat Reader, without involving your browser (a conflict between Acrobat Reader and your browser may be the source of some of your problems).
5)	On some occasions, a PDF file might print properly, even though it cannot be rendered properly on a computer screen. If, after trying the above recommendations, you still can't view the document, try printing the first page directly from Acrobat Reader. If that page is also garbled, there may be a problem that goes beyond the video display. However, if the print is clear, then a conflict between Acrobat Reader and your video display is likely.
6)	Keep an eye open on how your Acrobat Reader performs with other PDF documents. If you consistently have trouble with other PDF files, including documents from other sites, you might need to reinstall Acrobat Reader (that is, one of the files that Acrobat Reader loads may have become corrupted).

For additional discussion from Adobe on problems viewing a PDF file, please visit http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/328652.html.

Adobe has also prepared tips for configuring your web browser to work with Adobe Acrobat:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/315029.html
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/328635.html

C. Problems Printing PDF Documents

Problems printing PDF documents are far less common than viewing problems. If you can view PDF documents, but have trouble printing them, then the following might be helpful.

1)	As before, check that you are using the most recent version of Acrobat Reader (see item 1 in section B).
2)	If you are viewing the PDF document from within your browser window, you will usually see at least 2 printing options. Do not use the Print function of your browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape) - that can cause problems. Instead, click on the print icon associated with Acrobat Reader within the display portion of your window.
3)	Save the document to your computer (see item 4 in section B) then view and print the document directly from Acrobat Reader (circumvent the browser entirely).
4)	Confirm that the printer you have selected in the Print routine of Acrobat Reader is the same as the printer you are connected to.
5)	If none of the above work, ensure that your printer drivers are working correctly (printer drivers can sometimes become corrupted, and may need to be re-installed). Updated printer drivers, which are typically available from the printer manufacturer's website, may also resolve the problem.

For additional information on overcoming printing problems of Adobe PDF files, please consult their troubleshooting page at http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/316508.html.