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Instructions on downloading forms
Adobe Portable Document Format® (PDF)
PDF files
To view and print the document you can download the free Acrobat Reader®
viewer from the Adobe website. In
order to ensure that your reader supports the most up-to-date features, please
install the latest version on your computer.
Editable PDF files
- To be able to work with an editable PDF file, you must have at least Adobe Acrobat Reader Version 5.0 installed on your computer. Version 7.0 is recommended. This software can be downloaded free of charge from the Adobe website.
- Open the form by clicking on the link to the required form on the EPO forms page. Depending on your browser software, you may have to keep the shift key depressed (Netscape) or use the right mouse button to click on the download button and then choose "Save target as" from the pop-up window (MS Internet Explorer).
- Store the file on the local hard disk (editing is done off-line).
- Open the file using Acrobat Reader (without using the browser).
- With the left-hand mouse button, click on the sections to be edited and insert your text. When adding text to those sections in which several lines of text are possible, press carriage return to start a new line.
- Simply click on the check boxes and a cross appears; click again and the cross is deleted.
- Once you have correctly filled in all the sections, click with the mouse anywhere on the white margin of the PDF document so that the last section you edited is closed before you send the document to the printer (otherwise the open section will not be printed).
- At the bottom left of the printer dialogue box (File Print) there are two white boxes. In the lower one, marked "Page Scaling", select the option "Reduce to printer margins" or "Fit to printer margins" ("Passend verkleinern" in the German version of the reader, and "Réduire" in French) to ensure that the document is printed correctly. Please select this option before you print out the document (otherwise those parts of the document which were not within the print margins of your printer in the original layout will be printed either in part only or not at all).
Important note: The freeware Acrobat Reader alone will not allow you to save the processed forms. To do so, you will have to get Adobe PDF Standard or Adobe Acrobat Professional, which are not freeware.