Downloading Files

Productivity Commission documents are published on this site as portable document format (pdf) files and, since July 2002, as rich text format files (rtf). PDF files published from 27 September 2005 onwards have been printed using Adobe Acrobat Distiller 7.0, and to be read require the installation of Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0, 6.0 or 7.0. PDF files published from 1 November 2003 to 26 September 2005 have been printed using Adobe Acrobat Distiller 6.0, and to be read require the installation of Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or 6.0. PDF files published from 17 September 2001 to 1 November 2003 have been printed using Adobe Acrobat Distiller 5.0, and to be read require the installation of Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0, 5.0 or 6.0. A free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 can be downloaded from the Adobe Acrobat (external link) site. PDF files published before 17 September 2001 are either Adobe Acrobat version 2, version 3 or version 4 files, all of which can be read by Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0, 5.0 or 6.0. The Commission has an ongoing program to upgrade all pdf files to version 7.

Some of the larger documents on the site have been published as Winzip archives containing pdf or rtf files. Opening of Winzip archives requires the installation of Winzip, which can be purchased from the Winzip Site (external link) site.

The Productivity Commission has provided these links for your convenience, and does not endorse any of the products.

Occasionally a pdf file will not open from a browser (Internet Explorer or Netscape). A more reliable method of reading a pdf file is to save it first and then open it using Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is done by placing the cursor over the link and pressing the right mouse button. This should open a menu, which includes an option of either "Save Target As..." (Internet Explorer) or "Save Link As..." (Netscape), which can be selected to save the pdf file to a specified destination.

If you encounter any difficulties in reading or downloading files, particularly older versions of pdf files, please contact the Web Editor by email or by phone on (03) 9653 2264 for assistance.