What is a PDF document?

PDF stands for 'portable document format'. PDF documents can be opened on any brand of computer.

PDFs are created for a variety of reasons: 

• to reduce the filesize of large documents - especially documents with lots of images
• to protect the document from changes
• to make sure that the document can be printed by people who do not have the software used to create the original (eg Microsoft Word)

The plug-in (software) used to read or print PDF documents can be downloaded free-of-charge from the Adobe website: