Adobe Acrobat Reader (PDF) Troubleshooting FAQs

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Documents Provided as PDF Files on ODFL.com

Invoices, as well as Bills of Lading and shipping labels created on ODFL.com, are supplied in Portable Document Format (PDF) files, which require Adobe Acrobat Reader version 6.0 or higher to view and print. If you do not have this plugin installed, download it for free from Adobe's web site.

Common Issues

Below are the most common challenges customers encounter while using PDF files on ODFL.com. More extensive troubleshooting assistance for Adobe Acrobat Reader can be found on Adobe's Acrobat Reader Support website.

Document contains information from a previously-created document:

Your browser may have stored data from a previously-created Bill of Lading or label in its cache. Try clearing your cache and restarting your browser. You may also need to disable caching in order to prevent this from happening on future visits.

Document does not appear; screen is blank, or only a red X is visible:

If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, you may see a blank page or a red X where the document should appear, or you may see a message stating that the page cannot be displayed. If this is the case, please download the reader from Adobe's web site and install it before again attempting to create Bills of Lading or shipping labels.

When attempting to generate labels, a warning message states "This page contains both secure and non-secure items. Do you want to display the non-secure items?". A blank window opens, but no labels appear.

This warning message is caused by a known bug in the Internet Explorer 6 browser. To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0. Instructions for obtaining the latest service pack are available from the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

Document contains garbled text or unusual characters

If you do not have an up-to-date version of Adobe Acrobat Reader installed (version 6.0 or higher), garbled text or non-text characters may appear on your screen or printed page. If this is the case, please download the most current version from Adobe's web site and install it before again attempting to create Bills of Lading or shipping labels.

Document appears correctly on the screen, but printed pages are blank.

When printing your document, make certain that you are using Acrobat Reader's print button as illustrated in Fig. 1 below. Avoid using the browser's File > Print option, or the browser's print button.

Fig 1: Acrobat Toolbar vs. Browser toolbar

Pages or labels are misaligned, page breaks are incorrect, or text is being cut off

For shipping labels, insure that you are using Avery 5264 labels or a generic equivalent. Be sure to use the Acrobat toolbar's print button, as illustrated in Fig. 1 above. If misalignment still occurs, check the print dialog box as illustrated below in Fig. 2, and change the Page Scaling option to "Reduce to Printer Margins."

Fig 2 : Acrobat Print Dialog Box

I'm still having problems viewing PDF documents.

Feel free to call Old Dominion's INFOCALL1 © service at 1-800-235-5569, email webmaster@odfl.com, or for more extensive troubleshooting visit Adobe's Acrobat Reader Support website.