Well, you don't need it, but you might want it in order to view many of the important files that you might find on the Web. Files that you will find in Adobe's PDF format are common documents like IRS forms, product manuals, reports, business information, maps, e-books (electronic books) - which includes all formats like novels, plays, poetry, magazines and historic documents - and many other documents.

Let's take an example: (sorry reader's outside of the USA, you may not totally 'get' this reference!) It's April and U. S. taxes are due. You start your paperwork and realize that you did something different last year and need another form that's not in your regular packet.

OK ... what's the procedure for this ... you get in the car, drive to the local post office, park the car, go in and rummage around the piles of forms that are there and it isn't there. Oh well, get back in the car and drive to the downtown federal buildings and again find a parking place ... find the IRS office ... look through the stacks of forms to find the right one ... finally find it and proceed to make your way back to the car ... fight the downtown traffic back home and now you are too tired to work on your taxes!

Whew!! That sounds like a lot of work! Well, I can tell you for certain that there is an easier way to get that form! Here's the new procedure:

Connect to the internet (however you connect); open up a browser (where you view web pages: like Internet Explorer, Netscape, or AOL's browser); go to the address bar (box) near the top of the window; type in www.irs.gov; press the Enter key or click on the 'Go' button to get you to the site.

Now, over to the left you'll see a heading labeled "Most Requested Forms and Publications" and below it you'll see a list of the most common forms that people request. If your form is not listed, then simply click on the last link in that section labeled "More Forms and Publications" which will bring you to a different page.

Now, this is the most difficult part of the whole procedure ... remember now, this is a government web site, it's not supposed to be easy! On the page there are about '500' links - well, it seems like that many! Anyway, at this point - don't give up now! - look at your situation - do you know the name and or number of the form that you need? If you do, then simply click on the very first link under the heading: "Download Forms and Publications by:" which will get you to another page with the listing of all the forms available on the site. It looks very confusing but don't give up yet!

If you look at the first column to the left of the list it looks like there's no rhyme or reason to it (oh, that's right, it doesn't have to! It's the IRS after all!) - just kind of ignore that column and look at the next column of information. This column will contain the more familiar form name and number and it is in order! You will see the more common forms like Form 1040 and 1040A and when you do, you will notice that the ones that are before it are forms in the 900 range of numbers, so you can see that all you need to do is find the number for the form you need and then choose it.

You choose it by clicking on the line that the form is on and then go down a bit on the page and click on the button that says "Review Selected Files". You will have a link on a new page for that particular form that you selected. Make sure that it is the correct form number and then go ahead and click on that link. If it isn't correct, click on the back button and try again.

By clicking on that link, you are choosing a PDF formatted document - by the way PDF stands for Portable Document Format and is also the extension for each document. So if you see a file in your folders on your computer that looks like this: filename.pdf - that file can only be viewed by the Adobe Reader software.

Getting back to the IRS website, when you click on that link, you don't have to do anything else other than to watch it come up in your Adobe Reader - that is, you will if you have it installed on your computer. Need to get it? Simply go to www.adobe.com where you will find a link to download the software for free!

Now, so you can find it and use it again, make sure that you click on the "Save a Copy" button in the left corner to save that form that you searched so hard for! Also, don't forget to go back to the list after you save the form to get any instructions that go with the form. Bring it into your Adobe Reader software the same way and you're ready to work on your taxes!

Now, even though it took a while to write out these instructions on how to get a form from the web site, it is actually a very quick procedure!

So, why do people and companies use PDF documents so extensively?

PDF files are enormously popular because of 2 main features: they retain the original formatting for the document and they are "portable".

Formatting is the design - the look and 'feel' of the document. Easily represented by forms to fill out that need to look and print the same for each person, like the tax forms, it's meant to be a standard 'view' no matter what 'platform' it's viewed on - Windows computers, Macintosh computers, Unix computers or any portable device like a cell phone. Consistency is the key here and that is why people choose to create and transmit documents in PDF format.

Written by Debbi Baird, Co Owner, PC For Seniors Author of many technical articles in