What are the recommended PDF viewer settings for Stata documentation?

We recommend Adobe Reader to view Stata's PDF documentation. (Mac users please read the FAQ about why you shouldn't try to use Preview.)

Adobe Reader has some tools that we find useful when reading the Stata documentation. However, these tools are not enabled by default.

To enable these tools, right-click in Adobe Reader's toolbar and make sure the following are checked:

• Under "Page Display Toolbar",
  • Single Page Continuous
  • Single Page
  
  
• Under "Page Navigation Toolbar",
  • Previous View
  • Next View
  
  
• Under "Select & Zoom Toolbar",
  • Fit Page

Single Page Continuous and Single Page let you easily change your viewing mode between continuous scrolling and jumping a page at a time like a real printed manual. StataCorp staff are evenly divided about which is better; you should try both and decide for yourself.

Previous View and Next View work much like the Back and Forward buttons in a web browser. After you click on a link in Stata's PDF documentation, you can click on the Previous View button in Adobe Reader to return to your previous location.

Fit Page provides you with a quick way to set Adobe Reader's zoom level to fit a single page in the window's viewable area. We often click on this button first immediately after opening the PDF documentation.

Special note for Stata for Mac and Stata for Unix users:

Adobe Reader has a limitation on Mac and Unix: when Stata tries to tell Reader to go to a particular page in a manual, if that manual is already open in Adobe Reader, then Reader will refuse to change the page. For this reason, on Mac and Unix systems, we recommend closing Adobe Reader after you are through reading a particular page or section before returning to your Stata session. Then, the next time you ask Stata to open a particular manual entry, Adobe Reader will comply with Stata's request.