Help with PDF files

The downloadable issues of Region 8 News on this site are in Adobe PDF format. This page offers information on what software you need to use PDFs, where to get it from, and where to find technical help if required.

Adobe PDF

In order to open, read and print the downloadable issues of the newsletter, you will need a copy of Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat software.

Adobe Reader is a free program
Adobe Acrobat is commercially sold software

Unless you already own a copy of Adobe Acrobat, we suggest you use Adobe Reader because it's free and your computer may already have it installed. If it isn't, click on the link above to download it.

The latest releases of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader are at version 7. Region 8 News PDF files can be opened using either of the two programs from version 5 or later. However, if you use version 7, you can take advantage of special features, such as all website and email addresses in the PDF being clickable.

Mac users

As well as using Mac editions of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat, Mac users can open Region 8 News PDF files using Apple Preview 3.0. This is a free program that is included as a standard element of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Full technical support for Preview, including troubleshooting tips, is available by choosing the Preview Help command under the program's Help menu.

Technical support

If you are using a Windows computer, have Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat installed, and browse the web using Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, PDFs should load into your web browser window directly. This works for Mac users too if they are using Apple Safari as their web browser.

For most other setups, clicking on the PDF download link for an issue of Region 8 News will probably prompt you to download the file rather than try to open it. If you are not sure, or if your web brower is not responding in the way you expect it to, try right-clicking (Mac users should Ctrl-click) on the download link and explicitly choose to download the file. When it has finished downloading, double-click on its file icon or open it from within Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat.

Occasionally, certain web browsers may fail to open or download the PDF completely, causing an error. Click here for a quick solution to this problem. For more technical support, use the links in the green panel on this page.