Accessing Content on This Site

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You are on this page: Accessing Content on This Site

The OCFS website is large and contains documents stored in multiple formats, including PDFs and Microsoft Office documents for download. This page has helpful information on working with these documents.

Accessing PDFs

Depending on your browser settings, PDFs will either download onto your computer or display in the browser window.

If you use assistive technologies to read PDFs, the preferred method is to download the PDF and view it directly with your preferred assistive software.

Browser Support for PDFs

Most browsers can now support viewing PDFs directly. For proper viewing, you may have to install an Adobe PDF plugin. The default behavior for different browsers is as follows:

Chrome

Chrome will open a PDF in the browser window using it's own PDF reader. The Chrome PDF reader is not compatible with most assistive technologies. If you use assistive technologies, configure Chrome to always download PDFs.

Explorer,
Edge,
Firefox

Explorer, Edge and Firefox will open a PDF in the browser window if the Adobe PDF plugin is installed, otherwise they will download it. PDFs displayed through the Adobe PDF plugin should be compatible with assistive technologies.

Safari

Safari will open a PDF in the browser window using it's own PDF reader. The Safari PDF reader should be mostly compatible with most assistive technologies, but some advanced features will be missing.

Downloading PDFs

To manually download a PDF:

  1. Select the lnk with your right mouse button or its equivalent to access the shortcut menu.
  2. From the shortcut menu, select the Save or Download option.

PDF Resources

Some useful external links for working with PDFs:

Accessing Microsoft Office Documents

Microsoft Office documents include Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.

When you select a link to a Microsoft Office document:

  • Microsoft Edge and Explorer will prompt you for whether to Open or Save the document.
  • All other browsers will download the document.

If you are using Edge or Explorer to view a Microsoft document, the browser will open document in the appropriate application. If you do not have the necessary application, the browser will try to install Microsoft controls to display the document in the browser. You may be required to approve these before they will install or run.

Other browsers require you have Microsoft Office or Microsoft document reader to read the document once it has downloaded.

If you are using an Apple Mac, then Pages, Numbers, and Keynote should all open Microsoft Office documents normally.

Microsoft Office Resources

Some useful external links for working with Microsoft Office documents.

Accessing Word Documents on Windows Versions prior to 10

Microsoft has dropped all support for free Word viewers for systems running anything older than Windows 10. There are no easy solutions to this if you are on an older system.

If you do not have Microsoft Office on your computer and are blocked from installing Microsoft controls in Edge or Explorer to display the document directly in the browser, you have the following options:

  • Sign up for Microsoft Office Online. This requires a Microsoft email account, which will allow you to copy files to OneDrive, where the Office Online apps can see them.
  • Download and install LibreOffice or Open Office. Both are free and open source office suites that are Microsoft Office compatible.
  • Use Microsoft's tool to generate self-displaying Office document links.
    1. From the OCFS Web site, right-click the link for the Office document you want to view and select copy.
    2. On the page View Office documents online, paste the URL of the document into the form field.
    3. Select the Create URL button.
    4. Select the preview in a new window button.
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