Document Formats

A document can be stored in ProQuest in one or more of the formats described below. For any document in a search results list, labelled format icons indicate format availability. Click the format icon/link to display the corresponding format.

With a document displayed in any format, you can select from a common set of tasks and options.

Document details
Document formats
Other ways to get a document

Document details

Citation/Abstract

Bibliographic information, available abstract/summary. This format appears when there is no full text available for an item.

Brief citation

Basic bibliographic information only.

Full text + graphics

Citation, abstract, complete document text, image thumbnails (if available)

Important to know: Click a thumbnail image to view an enlargement in Image View.

With Full text displayed, click Turn on search term navigation, to locate (highlight) occurrences of your search term(s).

If your institution has set up links from ProQuest citations to other resources, you will also be able to view those.

Document formats

Abstract

Provides a summary or statement of the contents of an item.

Audio content

Provides embedded audio and the associated record.

Full text

Full text consists of citation, abstract and complete document text. Any photographs, illustrations, charts, or other images, including scanned images of page content, may also display.

Illustration

Download illustrations from a document.

JPEG Image Viewer

Use the JPEG Image View if you have executed a search and you want to view instances of your search term.

To access the Image View page, click an image thumbnail on the Document View page.

In cases where an article contains more than one image, you can move between images using the Previous/Next Image links on the Image View page without having to go back to the Document View page. Alternatively, you can type an image number into the box and click Go.

JPEG format images are indicated by the JPEG format icon icon.

Microsoft Word document

Document in Word (.doc, .dot, .rtf, etc.) format.

Page view (clickable)

In the case of historical newspaper content, or magazine content, items are also available in Page view (clickable) format. Whereas PDF (Portable Document Format) format is a scan of a single document, the page view options offer a scan of a whole page spread of a newspaper (which may contain several articles) so you can view articles in their wider context within the publication. Page view (clickable) format acts as a navigation aid; you can click the hotspots for each article on a page spread to go to a scan of just that article so you can view it in more detail. In addition, instances of your search terms are highlighted in Page view (clickable) format.

PDF

Where available, you can view documents in Portable Document Format (PDF). This can be used across many different types of computers and browsers, and will preserve the look and feel of the original document in terms of fonts, layout, and images.

Either scanned images of documents in PDF or "native" PDF documents created from source files are able to be read by screenreaders. For Dissertations & Theses content, you can also click this icon to view either a preview of the first few pages of a dissertation or thesis in PDF format, or a thumb-nail scanned image of the first 24 pages of the document, letting you quickly locate, enlarge and view pages of interest.

You can use the PDF options to work with the document in a variety of ways, including:

Printing, emailing or saving the PDF
Sharing the PDF
Zooming or panning
Viewing thumbnail images of all pages
Searching for a specific word in the file

Rich Text Format

Download an item in Microsoft's RTF (rich text format) so that you can save the text into almost all versions of any word processor and on any computer operating system, and make changes to the content if you want to.

Supplemental file

In cases where there are dissertations that have been submitted with supplemental files, this icon indicates the presence of additional supporting material. Additional icons will indicate the type of material, for example, audio/video, text files, images, scripts, data files, and so on.

In some cases, you may have to download specialist software or plug-ins in order to be able to view supplemental files; for example, if you want to view a 3D simulation, you would not be able to unless you had previously installed the software that was used to create the file.

Spreadsheet

Download an Excel spreadsheet file (.xls, etc.), for example as found in ProQuest Entrepreneurship.

Text and Graphics

Complete document text plus any available images.

TIFF

Download an image in .tiff (Tagged Image file) format.

Transcript

This icon indicates the presence of a transcript for video content.

Video

View video content using the player embedded in the Video Document View page; if you want to view the video at full screen size, click the Full screen icon to the right of the video player window.

Video download

View and download video content in a variety of formats, and view transcripts of video content. Instances of your search term will be shown as highlighted.

You can also download the video in different formats using the appropriate Format links. The following formats are available:

.flv - suitable for use with Macromedia Flash player
.mov - suitable for use with Apple’s QuickTime media player, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player 7 and above
.mp4 - suitable for use with Apple’s QuickTime media player or RealPlayer