Adobe Help

The contents of this page was obtained by Provincial Treasury from The Ministry of Forests, with appreciation, and edited to conform to Risk Management's website.

The forms found on the Risk Management site are of the ".PDF" type, which require you to have Adobe Acrobat 4.0.   A free version of the reader can be found here .

Usage

The electronic forms can be used in a number of ways:

• view them online
• get & print -- meaning open the form, print or photocopy it, then fill it in on paper.
• fill & print -- open the form, fill it in electronically, then print the completed form.

Storing the Forms on your PC

PDF files can be saved to your PC and opened later when you are disconnected from the Internet. This is useful for commonly used forms that you may print and use often, or for portable notebook PCs that you may carry with you when traveling. For example, with the Internet Explorer browser, you can right-mouse-click and choose save (instead of open), and save the forms to a directory of your choosing, perhaps called RiskForms. Later, you can launch Acrobat Reader on your PC, do a file open, and select the form you wish.

Acrobat Forms

For detailed help on Adobe Acrobat Reader, view MoF's detailed online help for new users.

Tips on Printing Acrobat Forms

1. Use the Acrobat Print Button. If you are printing an Acrobat file from within your browser, ALWAYS USE THE ACROBAT PRINT BUTTON. That is the little one just above and left of the Acrobat screen. DON’T USE the browser’s print button at the top nor the browser’s file, print menu. The reason is, the browser will print it as a web page, with headers, footers, etc. and generally squish it. This printing confusion only exists when you have Acrobat as a plug-in within the browser. If you launch Acrobat standalone, you only have the one print choice – Acrobat’s.
2. Size & Orientation. All the forms have been designed for paper size and orientation. If a form says 14x8.5 on the bottom left of the screen, then it is suppose to be printed landscape on legal paper. The advice here is to print it on the paper size it was designed for, otherwise, filling it in by hand could be a bit squished, or some of the 14x8.5 form will be clipped if printed on 11x8.5.
3. Shrink It?  However, when you print, the Acrobat print panel has a setting on it called "shrink to fit". If this is checked, Acrobat will attempt to squeeze the form on whatever size paper you have. This can be quite useful if you just want to see it.
4. Bottom Line – if the print does not look right, make sure you are using Acrobat’s print button, check or change the paper size and orientation, and, lastly, it does assume you have a printer capable of at least, say, 300 dpi (it does not work too well with a daisy wheel or dot matrix printer!).
5. Acrobat as Plug-in? You can have Acrobat configured to launch either as a browser "plug-in", which is the default installation, or launched as a standalone program (a helper application). The former appears inside your browser while the latter appears as its own instance of Acrobat.
6. Printing Problems?  You may experience problems with your form printing incorrectly if you do not have a Post-Script Printer Driver or a newer version PCL Driver. If this occurs, please call your systems HelpDesk.

Tips on Using Acrobat Fillable Forms

• fillable Acrobat forms have had data entry fields added to them. Unlike normal Acrobat files that are simply a print image, these additional fields can be entered electronically from your PC.
• some of the forms include instructions or examples
• fillable Acrobat forms can be used either of two ways. You can either "get & print" the Acrobat form, then fill it in as a normal paper form, or you can "get & fill", meaning, electronically fill in the fields first, and then print it.
• after you open the form, use either the "tab" key to move from field to field, or use your mouse to click directly within the fields of your choice. You must use your mouse to click your selection for a check box.
• print it before you close it, unlike a Word document, Acrobat cannot save your input, so input your data then print it before you close the form or turn off your PC.