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This page was last updated on 18 April 2005
Downloading publications and other documents
Many CRE publications, strategy papers and other documents can be downloaded directly from this site, free of charge.
These documents are usually available in one of two file formats; Adobe Acrobat (pdf) or Microsoft Word (.doc or .rtf).
Adobe Acrobat files: Some documents in this site are stored in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). This file format is used to store document with complex formatting that the authors would like to preserve (typically text and graphics displayed in several columns). Files in this format will have the PDF symbol next to them. To view and print PDF files, you must have Adobe® Acrobat® Reader installed. If you don’t already have this installed, you can download a free copy from Adobe’s website - see the Links section of this page..
Microsoft Word files: These usually contain just text and no graphics, and are often used for consultation documents and questionnaires. You can open these files with Microsoft Word, or a compatible word processor. If you don’t have either installed on your computer, you can download Microsoft’s Word Viewer 2003 for free from the Links section.
How to download a file
There are two ways of downloading an Adobe Acrobat or Word document.
The first is to open it directly from the web page. This is useful if you want to view the document immediately. However, you will need to remember to save the downloaded document once it has opened, if you want to be able to view the document again later. We will refer to this as Method 1.
The second method is to save it directly to your computer’s hard drive for viewing later. This is recommended if you want to download several documents in one go, for example, a series of factsheets. This is referred to as Method 2 below.
Downloading - Method 1
Simply click on the title of the document you wish to download. The download should then start automatically, and the downloaded file will be displayed once the download is complete.
Downloading - Method 2
Click on the right-hand button of your mouse. A menu list will then appear. Select ‘Save Target as…” (if you are using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or the Opera web browser), or ‘Save Link as…’ (on Mozilla’s Firefox browser), by highlighting it with your mouse and clicking on the left mouse button. You will then be asked to specify in which folder on your computer the downloaded file will be saved.
Download times
Downloadable files vary in size, and hence some will take longer to download than others.
File sizes are expressed in kilobytes (kb) or megabytes (Mb). A megabyte is one thousand kilobytes. The size of each download is shown alongside its description, for example:
The time it takes to download a document of a given size depends greatly on the speed of your internet connection. The following is a rough guide:
| File size | 250kb | 500kb | 750kb | 1Mb | 1.5Mb |
| Connection speed | |||||
| 56kbps (dial-up) | 0m35s | 1m10s | 1m45s | 2m22s | 3m30s |
| 512kbps (broadband) | 0m4s | 0m8s | 0m11s | 0m15s | 0m23s |
| 2Mbps (fast broadband) | 0m1s | 0m2s | 0m3s | 0m5s | 0m7s |
If the download doesn't work...
On rare occasions, you may find that your computer freezes when you try to download a file, the download takes much longer than expected, or that the file fails to download at all.
This could be due to a number of reasons, such as a problem with the web browser software you are using, an unreliable internet connection, security restrictions (this can happen if you are attempting to download the file from behind a corporate network), or simply because a large number of people are attempting to download the same file at the same time.
In the latter case, the problem will often resolve itself if you try to download the file again at a later time in the day.
If the problem persists, contact us and we may be able to supply you with the downloadable file in another way, such as by emailing it to you.
