Digital Downloading Instructions

PDF Download Instructions

1. Your files are available for download immediately after purchase and can be accessed at the PDA bookstore. Once you have purchased your digital file you have 30 days to download it before your purchase lapses.
2. Please login with your PDA WEB User ID and password, by clicking “Account” in the upper right navigation area.
3. Select “Download recent Purchases and Technical Reports” from the available list. The digital file you purchased will be listed here.
4. Click on the file you want to download. You will then be asked to choose "OPEN" or "SAVE"
5. Choose "SAVE" to save the file to your computer.
6. After saving the file, you can open the PDF file with Adobe Acrobat Reader or one of the other options listed above. When the file is opened, you will be prompted for a password; the document password is the same as your PDA password at the time of your download and cannot be changed.

If you have any questions please contact PDA at info@pda.org or +1(301) 656-5900.

Problems downloading PDF files

Problem 1: When opening the PDF in Internet Explorer, an error message appears: “There was an error opening this document. The file cannot be found”. Internet Explorer could not download the file to a temporary workspace on your computer. Please try the following:

1. Right click on the Internet Explorer icon (the blue “e”) and select “Properties”.
2. Click on the “Advanced” tab.
3. In the “Security” section, uncheck the “Do not save encrypted pages to disk” option.
4. Click “OK” or “Apply” at the bottom of the window.

Problem 2: When opening the PDF, the following error message appears: “Could not open the file ‘XXX.pdf’ because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been corrupted”. The entire file was not downloaded or Internet Explorer may have downloaded an incomplete copy of the file. This will prevent future downloads from succeeding until the following is completed:

1. Close all Internet Explorer windows.
2. Right click on the Internet Explorer icon (the blue “e”) and select “Properties”.
3. Click on the “Delete Files” button in the “Temporary Internet Files” section.
4. Restart Internet Explorer and try to download the file again. Note that the download is not finished until the “Download Complete” message appears.
5. (Optional) Go to “Advanced” Settings Tab and in the “Security” section check “Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed”.

Problem 3: When opening the PDF, the following error message appears: "Adobe Acrobat encountered a problem and is about to close...". This is most likely caused by a problem in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Please try the following solution:

1. Download the Adobe Reader and Acrobat Cleaner Tool from Adobe Labs.
2. Run the Cleaner Tool to completely uninstall Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader.
3. Re-boot your computer.
4. Re-install Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader

Problem 4: When opening the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader the "Edit > Save" option and the Save icon (an image of a disk) are disabled (the file cannot be saved). One of the following may solve this issue.

1. Select the "Edit > Save As" option in Adobe Reader's main menu to save the file.
2. Try downloading the file again and save it BEFORE you open the file in a PDF reader.

If the solutions above do not work, try one of the following:

1. Open the PDF in a browser such as Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, or Safari by "Dragging and Dropping" the PDF file icon onto your browser window.
2. Open the PDF on a different computer. If the PDF opens successfully on the second computer, then the Acrobat Cleaner Tool should be run on the first computer.
3. Download and install a PDF reader that is not from Adobe. (Select one of the options listed above.)