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REFRESHING

Having problems downloading .pdf files? This page will help you.

All files (e.g. web pages or downloads) are held on the Big Computers (Servers) ready for immediate viewing.  And once you have looked at (or downloaded) a page (file) it is held on your computer ready for immediate viewing. In techno-jargon: the files are saved to a cache (temporary storage).  The next time you look at that page, it is recalled from the cache, just like opening a document in a word processor - you will be looking at that original page, even if the designer has updated his web site.  So, for instance, you may find that every day you look at the weather forecast online and every day it is the same - you know that the forecasters must change the web page every day but you only get to see the original page, the one you first viewed.    

Before I conclude with some more technical stuff, I shall give you a solution (it usually works).  Make your computer see the latest ('live') page. View the web page. Now press F5.  If that doesn't work, hold down Control and press F5. You will see the out-of-date page disappear, replaced by the latest page. This is called 'refreshing.'

Now that you have the idea of 'refreshing' you can play with the settings on your web browser to tell it when to refresh. You can choose to view pages from your cache (they will appear almost instantly but may be out of date) or they can be refreshed each time (slower, because your computer downloads the latest page from the web). 

If, after reading this, you still can't see the latest version of a page, it may be something beyond your control:  the server.  Even your ISP's (Internet Service Provider's) server needs to be refreshed, this may be done every minute or it may be done just a few times per hour.  So if I send  you an email saying I've just updated the OPTICS LIST and all you can see is the old one (and pressing F5 doesn't help) wait a few minutes until your ISP refreshes their server.

Finally, one more solution. You may have eagerly accepted invitations to download the latest version of Acrobat Reader (to view .pdf files) but you already had an older version on your computer. The instructions probably didn't tell you that you have to un-install the old version before installing the new version - or you will have problems downloading .pdf files.