PDF Help

PDF (Portable Document Format) documents can be opened and viewed by anyone using Adobe Acrobat or free Adobe Reader software. PDF files look exactly like the original documents, regardless of the operating system, software, and fonts used to create the original. Download Adobe Reader

Downloading Vanderbilt Catalog PDFs

From the Vanderbilt University Catalogs Web pages, click on the catalog section that you want to view. The PDF file will download to your computer.

Navigating PDFs

There are several ways to navigate within a PDF using either Adobe Acrobat or the free Adobe Reader. The left side of the Acrobat/Reader window contains the navigation pane. The right side is the document pane.

Click on the Pages tab on the left edge of the navigation pane to display thumbnail views of all pages in the document. Click on any thumbnail to bring that page into the document pane.

Click on the Bookmarks tab to display bookmarks that have been created for the document. Click on a bookmark title to go to that section of the document.

Navigation buttons are available within the Acrobat/Reader window. Use these buttons to advance forward or backward through the document one page at a time. Type a page number into the page number window to go to that page.

Navigation options are also available from the View menu at the top of the Acrobat/Reader window. Click on View > Go To, then select a navigation option.

The vertical scroll bar on the right side of the Acrobat/Reader window may also be used to scroll through a document.

Magnifying — The Zoom tool may be used to magnify the document. To access the Zoom tool, click on the magnifying tool icon in the Toolbar, or use the Tools menu at the top of the Acrobat/Reader window. Using the Zoom tool, click on the area of the page in the document pane that you want to magnify.

Links in PDFs — Place the pointer over the desired link and click. Clicking a link in a PDF document is like clicking a link on a Web site. The link may take you to another location in the document, to another document, or to a Web site.

Searching — Search for words in PDF documents using either the Find toolbar or the Search PDF window. The Find toolbar searches for words in the current open PDF document. Go to Edit > Find to access the Find toolbar. The Search PDF window can be used to search for words in one or multiple PDF documents. To access the Search PDF window, go to Edit > Search in Acrobat.

Printing PDFs

As with most applications, for basic office printing you start by selecting the printer, page size, page orientation, and other general printing options in the Print Setup (Windows) or Page Setup (Mac OS) dialog box. Choose File > Print Setup (Windows) or File > Page Setup (Mac OS) to set these general printing options.

To print pages from an open PDF document, click the Print button in the Acrobat/Reader toolbar, or go to File > Print using the top menu bar.

In the Acrobat/Reader Print dialog box, select options for printer, number of copies, pages to print, etc. From this dialog box, you can specify printing of all pages, a range of pages, the current page displayed in the Acrobat/Reader document pane, or pages that you have selected using thumbnails.

Using thumbnails to select pages to print — Click on the Pages tab on the left edge of the navigation pane to display thumbnail views of all pages in the document. Select pages by clicking on their thumbnails. Selected pages will be highlighted. You can Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) thumbnails to select noncontiguous pages, or Shift-click to select a contiguous range of pages. (You can also select a contiguous page range in the Print dialog box.) After selecting pages, go to File > Print. The “Selected pages” button will be highlighted in the Print dialog box, indicating that your selected pages will be printed when you click on the Print button.

More help with PDFs

For more help working with PDFs, launch Acrobat/Reader and click on Help, located on the menu bar at the top of the Acrobat/Reader window.