Troubleshooting Links to Supporting Documents

In order to more efficiently manage our public body documents we started using a different kind of addressing for links to supporting documents in December of 2007. In order for these links to work you must have opened the PDF document from our web server inside a browser that supports the Adobe Reader plug-in. The links will not work if you download the document before viewing or email the document to someone.

When the Adobe Reader is installed using the default settings the plug-in will be configured correctly to open PDF documents inside the browser.  However sometimes this setting gets changed or a bad Adobe Reader plug-in install makes this not work. We are providing the following information to help you identify and fix the problem. The instructions are for Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer version 7, and Adobe Reader version 8 but the concepts are the same for any platform and supported browser.

Disclaimer: This information is provided as a courtesy only to people familiar with changing computer settings. The City of Tempe does not provide computer support to our web site users. Use this information at your own risk and seek the help of a computer professional if you are not comfortable with changing your own configuration.

First determine if the Adobe reader is opening our documents in the web browser or not. Click on this link to open a new window displaying the current City Council agenda.

If you see the agenda inside your browser window you should not have a problem opening the links to the supporting documents. Here is what a PDF opened inside IE 7 looks like  (Notice the full Internet address in the blue bar and the Internet address box):

If you see the agenda inside a window similar to this your Adobe Reader downloaded the file first then opened it on your computer not from our web site. The links will not work (notice the file name in the blue bar doesn't start with http:// so it is not an Internet address):

If this is what you see you have to reconfigure Adobe Reader to open PDF files from the web inside the web browser. While Adobe Reader is open click on "Edit" then "Preferences" on the menu bar. Select "Internet" from the Categories list. Make sure that "Display PDF in browser" is checked like the example below. Apply the changes, close everything and restart your computer.

If the Display PDF in browser box is already checked the Adobe Reader plug-in may be incorrectly installed or disabled for some reason. Please refer to the Adobe web site for help. Here is a link to a relevant support article on that site:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=328233

If all else fails you can open the supporting document folder from our index of public bodies. Click on the public body you are researching then click the supporting document link in the upper right corner of the index page. If there is no supporting document link then the body you have chosen does not publish supporting documents.