How to save and print

Downloading PDFs

After you have navigated to a document (see Search and browse) you can download it in PDF form. PDF versions look like traditional printed legislation, and are particularly suited to printing.

The PDF's file size is provided as part of the link. Hover your mouse over the link to see the number of pages.

To view the PDF, you will need to have a PDF reader such as Adobe Reader installed, which is available for downloading for free from the Adobe website.

Note that we don’t recommend searching within the PDF after you have downloaded it as it can give unreliable results. Use Search within instead.

To download individual sections or clauses, and for other downloading options, see Tagging sections/clauses.

Saving legislation

To save an entire document, first download it in PDF format. You will be given the option of saving it to a location in your computer.

However, you should be aware that legislation has the potential to be amended at any time. If you save a version of an Act or Regulation and refer to it later, it may no longer be current. It may be better to save a link to the legislation instead.

To save individual sections or clauses, and to save legislation in an editable format (Microsoft Word), see Tagging sections/clauses.

Printing legislation

To print a specific section or clause, navigate to it and then use your browser’s Print function (under the File menu or Ctrl+P on most browsers). Or for more options, tag the section before printing—see Tagging sections/clauses.

To print an entire Act, Bill, Regulation, or Supplementary Order Paper, you usually get the best result from first downloading the PDF, and then printing it. But you can also print it from the View whole tab and then use your browser’s print function. Or you can tag every section/clause (up to 50 at a time)—see Tagging sections/clauses.

You can buy official printed copies of legislation from Legislation Direct and from selected bookshops. See Buy online.

For printed copies of a Deemed Regulation, see the details provided on that Deemed Regulation's information page.

Tagging sections/clauses

Tagging allows you to make a collection of individual sections and clauses so that you can refer to them later, or download them in PDF or Microsoft Word format. You can tag sections and/or clauses from Acts, Bills, Regulations, and Supplementary Order Papers, but not from Deemed Regulations. You can tag up to 50 sections and/or clauses from one or more documents.

Tagging

To tag a section or clause, first navigate to it and view it using the By sections or By clauses tab. Then use the Tag section (or Tag clause) button to add it to your collection.

The sections and clauses that you tag will remain in your collection for 13 days or until you clear it.

Viewing

To view your tagged sections/clauses collection, use the Tagged sections/clauses link at the top of the screen. Tabs let you view either individual sections or clauses (By sections/clauses), or the entire collection (View all). When viewing by sections/clauses, a table allows you to navigate between individual sections/clauses by clicking on the individual section/clause name. You can also click on the document title to return to the contents page of the Act, Bill, Regulation, or Supplementary Order Paper.

Under the By sections/clauses tab, use the Remove tag button to remove an individual section or clause from your collection. You can also delete everything from your collection by clicking Remove all sections/clauses from either tab.

If the sections/clauses in your collection contain links, clicking on a link will take you to the link's original destination away from your tagged collection. To return, you can use the Tagged sections/clauses link at the top of the screen.

Downloading, for printing or saving

To download your collection, click Download all. You then choose the format for downloading—PDF, Microsoft Word, or both. Once downloaded, you can print or save your document (or edit it, if in Microsoft Word).

Note that the layout in the downloaded document may not exactly match the layout in the original legislation. Also, you should be aware that legislation has the potential to be amended at any time. If you save sections/clauses and refer to them later, they may no longer be current.

Sharing legislation

You are welcome to link to this website, and to circulate links to this website. See Linking to this website.

We recommend that, if you want to share legislation, you do so by sharing the link rather than saving and circulating a PDF or downloaded sections/clauses, because the link will remain current while the other options can become out of date.