How to view the BSI Online Standards

Advice for members who are experiencing difficulty downloading the BSI online standards from the ECA website

The BSI Standards are designed to work with the Adobe PDF software, either Acrobat or Reader. However if you are using either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, these browsers contain their own PDF viewers, which are not compatible with opening and downloading the Standards.

To resolve this issue, members should first download and install Adobe PDF software, if it is not already installed:

To install Adobe:

Download Adobe Reader.

Next, if using either Chrome or Firefox, Adobe needs to be set as the default programme for handling PDFs.

To Change the Default PDF Viewer in Chrome:

Copy and Paste or type: chrome://plugins/ into the address bar, this will bring up the plugins page. Scroll down to Chrome PDF Viewer and click 'disable' to disable the built-in PDF viewer. Be sure to enable either Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat otherwise there will be no plugin to view PDF documents in Chrome.

To Change the Default PDF Viewer in FireFox:

Change the default PDF viewer under Tools > Options > Applications, scroll down to Portable Document Format (PDF) and change the Action tab to 'Use Adobe Acrobat' or 'Use Adobe Reader', depending on which version you have installed, to view the PDF. Alternatively it may be set to 'Save File' which will save the document without opening. Click 'ok' when done.

Those using Internet Explorer (IE) need not take any action with regard to the browser as IE does not have this issue.

How to open a BSI Document

1. Right click on the document
2. Select “Save target as” (sometimes will say “save link as”)
3. Save the document to somewhere memorable on your PC/Laptop
4. Go to the location you have saved the BSI Document
5. If you double click and get the “expired” message then right click the BSI document icon
6. Select “Open with”
7. Select Adobe Reader

For any queries or assistance with access to the BSI Online Standards Library contact ECA Member ServicesTeam on 020 7313 4800 or email membership@eca.co.uk.