re: Problem may already be solved
The current Microsoft Office seems to need a downloadable add-on to export PDF.
I have an Adobe PDF output in my printer list, allowing me to make a PDF file from any application that can print, but I'm damned if I can remember if it came with Windows or was plugged in by my Acrobat program.
Current Apple OSX versions seem to handle PDF quite nicely. I'd almost forgotten their "Preview" program.
Your suggestion is a good one--they should test to see if they can just open a document. Maybe he can e-mail them a little one (many online PDFs are huge).