How to open PDF files

One of the first problems which users encounter after fresh installation of Windows is inability to open PDF files. This is usually caused by absence of Adobe Acrobat Reader. This software from Adobe can open any PDF file but unfortunately is not part of the Windows or Linux operating system. That is why one of the first things any user should do after Windows installation is download and install new Acrobat Reader.

You can either get installation from Adobe by going to http://www.adobe.com just search for "acrobat reader" in any search engine. Please note that installation is completely free and you don't need to pay a single cent for it. What is not free is a version of Adobe Acrobat which allows to edit PDF files but only very limited number of people need to do this. So just get free Adobe Acrobat Reader and see if it works for you.

If you don't have internet connection you could ask a friend with internet to download a version of Acrobat Reader for you and burn it to CD.

There are number of other applications which could open PDF files like Foxit Reader, PDF-XChange Viewer, Sorax Reader and others. All of them provided free of charge as well.

For your reference PDF is stands for Portable Document Format and usually used to store print-ready documents which could be easily transferred between different computers while preserving their visual representation. It is the best way of storing document when you want to make sure that it will print in exactly same on other computers as it did on yours.

Don't try to open PDF files with notepad or any other text editors. PDF file uses specific rendering language which only understandable to software engineering specializing in document formats. And quite often PDF files are internally compressed or encrypted which prevents them from being reverse engineered in text editor.