This document covers some of the most frequently asked questions about how to use WorksheetWorks.com.
All of the worksheets that you create with WorksheetWorks.com are in PDF format. PDF stands for Portable Document Format, the industry standard for presenting and printing documents consistently regardless of your computer hardware, operating system or printer model. The PDF documents downloaded from WorksheetWorks.com can be viewed and printed using virtually any computer that is capable of using the Internet, and even some that aren't.
The most popular PDF reading application is the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Using the latest version of Reader guarantees compatibility with WorksheetWorks.com. It is available for every current (and many obsolete) computer operating systems. Most computers sold today automatically come with a PDF reader installed, so you may not need to install anything.
The easiest way is to simply use our website to create a document and then see if your browser automatically opens it for you. Depending on your browser software and configuration, it may open the file directly within the application or it will prompt you to save or open it. If you try and open the PDF document and you receive an error message saying that the computer does not know what to do with the file, then you probably do not have Acrobat Reader or any other PDF application installed.
Most of the worksheets you can create on WorksheetWorks.com come with three pages: the student's worksheet, an answer key and a license page. To print many copies of only the first page, open the print dialog box like you normally would (File - Print on the menu).
You can just one number (e.g. "1") or a range of numbers (e.g. "3-4") in the first box to only print the pages you want. You can also change the number of copies to be printed to match the number of students you will give the worksheet to. You might want to leave the answer key on your computer or print out just one copy. The license page does not need to be printed.
When you see the page that prompts you to download the PDF file, you can tell the browser to save it to your hard drive instead by right-clicking on the icon and click "Save target as..." as shown below. On a Macintosh with a one-button mouse, you may need to hold down the Option button first before clicking on the link, which should cause the browser to ask you where you want to save the document.
When you install Acrobat Reader, it attempts to behave like a plug-in to your browser. Occasionally this does not work well and makes using the PDF files a little harder. You can change Acrobat to open PDF files outside the browser by following these steps.
The next time you download a PDF file, your browser will ask you what you want to do with the file, or if it already knows, it will send the document to Acrobat.
These are some of the most useful key combinations. Refer to the Acrobat Reader help for more usage tips.
Ctrl-P | Brings up the print dialog box |
Ctrl-0 | Displays the document to fit the window |
Ctrl-1 | Displays the document a 100% |
Ctrl-L | Displays the document in full-screen (ESC to go back) |
Tap space bar | Jump to next page |
Hold down space bar | Changes cursor to a hand so you can drag around the page with the mouse |
Ctrl + hold down space bar | Changes cursor to a zoom icon so that you can zoom in with the mouse |
Ctrl + Alt + hold down space bar | Changes cursor to a zoom out icon so that you can zoom out with the mouse |
Unfortunately, recent versions of Adobe Acrobat have become very large due to new functionality that most people never use. It might help to start the reader application and keep it in the background before creating PDF documents from WorksheetWorks.com.
We welcome your suggestions and if the change you suggest can apply to a broad audience, we will put it up for consideration.
Please contact us with the details of how you want to use the materials, then wait for us to get back to you with a response. We try to be flexible.
In most cases, no, purely from a technical perspective. The document generation code runs inside a container that we developed for this purpose and needs a specially configured server. Placing individual PDF files on your site would not be permissible either. Again, however, we try to be flexible, so if you have a suggestion to make this work then contact us with the details.
Many of our worksheet designs came straight from documents used by educators in their own classrooms (some are so old that they are actually mimeograph reproductions). We would welcome your suggestion although we have a formidable amount of designs already in the development and testing queue.
While the website is still in beta, a lot of things are prone to be rearranged. The only ones you should see are 404 errors, which means a page was not found, and a 500 error, which means some code behaved badly. We log all of these errors and review them with great detail, so there is nothing you need to do about it in order for us to fix the problem. If it was a 404 error (page not found), you may have clicked on a link from another website and that page has already been moved elsewhere. You can try looking at the sitemap or using the search form to see if you can find the new location.
If you have a question that is not covered by this FAQ, please feel free to contact us and we will try to answer it.