A Note on File Formats

On the Chester County Bar Association website, several formats are used for the downloading of forms and flyers.  Below is a list of the formats and links to the software required to read and/or print them.

PDF

Adobe .PDF document stands for "Portable Document Format". This document has become a standard on the web because of the way fonts can be embedded into the document, thus helping the creator to present the most accurate display of their intended information. PDF Files are read by the Adobe Acrobat suite of software. There are two main forms of Adobe Acrobat. Adobe Acrobat Professional will allow you to create PDF files yourself. It also allows you to enter information into supported file, and save that information for later use. This software is commercially available from the Adobe website: Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is a 'light weight' version of the Acrobat professional suite. It is freely available for download, however the downside is that you can not save any information you enter into these forms. You can use it to enter the information, and then print out a hard copy of that document. You can download and install the free Adobe Reader software by clicking the link below.

DOC

The .DOC file format is a Microsoft Office Word Document. To read the file, you will need to have Microsoft Word installed on your computer, which is included with the widely used Microsoft Office suite of software. Note that this is different than Microsoft Works suite, which may not read the Office document properly. To read this document format, you will need to purchase and install Microsoft Office, which can be purchased from a number of software distributors. The homepage for Microsoft Office is located here: Microsoft Office Homepage.

ODF

ODF stands for "Open Document Format". Open document format (further known as "ODF") is an open source document format. This means that it is a standard which is freely available and anyone is able to write software which reads this format. This compares to Microsoft Word .DOC format, in that .DOC is a "closed" format and you must buy Microsoft Office to read it properly.

There are several free software suites which read ODF files. The most popular is OpenOffice, which is available to download for free. The different ODF file extensions are:

• .odt - Open Document Text
• .ods - Open Document Spreadsheets
• .odp - Open Document Presentations
• .odg - Open Document Graphics 

For more on the Open Document Format, read the Wikipedia article here.