PDF (Portable Document Format) files are files that have been created by a program called Adobe Acrobat. PDF files have rapidly become a standard format on the internet because they allow preservation of all the fonts, formatting, graphics, and color of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. It's a great technology - basically the Acrobat program takes a 'picture' of a document. That 'picture' can then be shared via the internet or email and, no matter what type of computer they are using, whoever sees it is seeing exactly what was written/designed.

You do need a specific program to read PDF files. It is a free program entitled Acrobat Reader. Acrobat Reader is available at a number of sites including the Adobe website. The following have been selected because of the ease of downloading. To download Acrobat Reader for your computer click on the following links:

Adobe Acrobat for Windows

Adobe Acrobat for Mac

There are a few discrepancies between various versions of Adobe Acrobat. If you are having a problem opening a PDF file you may need an updated version of Acrobat.