Not everyone owns the same word processing or publishing software (Microsoft Word, Corel's WordPerfect, etc.) or the same fonts you may choose to use in your files. So unless you know that all of your recipients have systems compatible with yours, converting and sending documents as PDF files may make it easier for the recipients to open and read the documents as you intended them to be seen.

Adobe PDF is the global standard ued by government agencies, publications, law firms, genealogists, and others to distribute and view documents that are print-ready. This format preserves the fonts, images, colors, graphics, and formatting of an original application file. It is platform-independent and can be viewed, shared, and printed by Windows, UNIX, and Macintosh, and OS/2 Warp users.

Adobe Acrobat (newest Version 8.0) is a computer document sharing program that lets you convert documents, family trees, pedigree and descendants' charts, etc. into the Portable Document Format (PDF) so anyonre who has a copy of Adobe Reader software can see the files as they were designed, without having to use the likely different fonts and inadequate graphics used by the reader's computer. It is easy to use and very powerful and offers all the traditional document publication features such a text search and cut and paste.

Adobe Reader is a must have free software that lets you open, view, search, and print Portable Document Format (PDF) files. To date more than 500 millon copies of Adobe Reader have been distributed worldwide on 23 platforms and 26 languages.

Adobe Reader 8 can be downloaded free at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Happy data sharing!

Efrain
San Diego, California