Skip ACF banner and navigation
Department of Health and Human Services logo
Questions?  
Privacy  
Site Index  
Contact Us  
  Home   |   Services   |   Working with ACF   |  Policy/Planning   |   About ACF   |   ACF News Search  
Administration for Children and Families US Department of Health and Human Services
Office of Child Support Enforcement
OCSE Home . Program Information . News . Publications . Policy . State Links . OCSE Search . Help

Tips/Help

Navigating     Viewing     Downloading     Searching

Navigating

At the beginning of the OCSE Home Page is a "What's New" link. This connects to a chronological listing of new items on the site. The "Questions?" link lets you ask a question and connect to a database of previously asked questions. Links to seven major major categories of Child Support Information follow:

  • Facts & Descriptions
  • News & Announcements
  • Forms, Reports & Other Resources
  • Policy Documents
  • External Information
  • Links to States
  • Feedback
There are similar links at the top of each OCSE page, as well as an "OCSE Search" link, which provides the capbility of a text search of the OCSE pages, and a "Help" link, which is the link to this page. Each OCSE page also has links to the Administration for Children and Families, our overall umbrella agency.

Viewing

General Viewing -- The main web pages and most of our documents are in hypertext markup language (HTML) format which can be viewed with most browsers. They are best viewed with Javascript enabled versions of Netscape ® Navigator (4.79 or higher) or Microsoft ® Internet Explorer (IE) (5.01 or higher).

File Formats -- OCSE tries to make all its documents availble in a variety of formats to make them more accessible. These formats include Portable Document Format (PDF), Rich Text Format (RTF), Microsoft ® Word, and plain ASCII text. These files will have the extensions .pdf, .rtf, .doc and .txt extensions respectively. Some older files may be in WordPerfect ® format, which usually has a .wp extension.

If you have a compatible reader for these files installed as a plug-in for your browser, then the files will be opened automatically in the reader when you left-click on them. If your browser does not support this, then right-click to download the file.

PDF files can be read with the Adobe ® Acrobat Reader which can be downloaded for free from the Adobe site at http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html.

RTF, Word, ASCII text and most WordPerfect files can be read with a free Microsoft ® Word Viewer available from http://office.microsoft.com/Downloads/default.aspx

Downloading

General downloading -- Most browsers allow you to use your right mouse button on a link or image in order to save files to your directory. Right click on the link and select "Save As .." (Netscape) or "Save Target As .." (IE) from the pop-up menu. Then select a directory to save the file in.

Files with a .zip or .exe extension are compressed files created with the Winzip ® compression utility. The .exe files are self-extracting executables. When downloaded and run, the compressed files will be expanded and extracted into a selected download directory. The .zip files are not self-extracting : they will require the use of Winzip ® software available at http://www.winzip.com. The extracted files may be in any of the formats described in Viewing.

Searching

General searching -- If you go to the top of our home page, you will see a yellow "Search" tab. This searchs indexed words and phrases in all the pages on the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) home page. The "OCSE Search" text link below it provides the capability of a search of the OCSE pages only.

National Electronic Child Support Resources (NECSRS) -- Our resource center, accessible from our front page, enables a search of the resources on the Office of Child Support Enforcement home page as well as other child support enforcement resources located in State IV-D agencies and elsewhere.

Browser searching -- Most browsers allow you to search for words or phrases within the Web document you are viewing. For example, the "Find in This Page" option is usually found under the "Search" submenu in Netscape. In Internet Explorer the Find (on This Page)" option is found in the "Edit" submenu. The Acrobat Reader mentioned above has the same "Find" feature under the "Edit" submenu.

Last Updated: Monday, 20-May-2002