No more PDF versions of the Ensign?

Hello reader,

I found a couple of recent conference talks that I wanted to save digitally in their Ensign-magazine-formatted form. However, I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to locate a PDF version of these Ensign articles (one is from 2003, the other is from 2007). I am pretty sure Ensign articles used to be available on lds.org as a PDF. What happened to the PDF versions of the Ensign?

Thank you,
Geoff

FowlerGR wrote:Hello reader,

I found a couple of recent conference talks that I wanted to save digitally in their Ensign-magazine-formatted form. However, I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to locate a PDF version of these Ensign articles (one is from 2003, the other is from 2007). I am pretty sure Ensign articles used to be available on lds.org as a PDF. What happened to the PDF versions of the Ensign?

Thank you,
Geoff

They're still available. For example, go to http://www.lds.org/ensign/2003/01?lang=eng and click on the first icon in the Download column and then select the Text option. It will download the PDF for January 2003.

Thank you for responding, eblood66. I was able to download the PDF version of Elder Ballard's May 2009 conference address from here: http://www.lds.org/ensign/2009/05/learn ... t?lang=eng. However, I was trying to find in PDF form in the Download section for these two Elder Holland conference addresses: http://www.lds.org/ensign/2007/11/the-o ... t?lang=eng and http://www.lds.org/ensign/2003/11/the-g ... d?lang=eng.

Any thoughts as to why some Ensign articles and conference addresses are available in PDF and others are not? Or am I missing something here?

Thank you,
Geoff

FowlerGR wrote:Thank you for responding, eblood66. I was able to download the PDF version of Elder Ballard's May 2009 conference address from here: http://www.lds.org/ensign/2009/05/learn ... t?lang=eng. However, I was trying to find in PDF form in the Download section for these two Elder Holland conference addresses: http://www.lds.org/ensign/2007/11/the-o ... t?lang=eng and http://www.lds.org/ensign/2003/11/the-g ... d?lang=eng.

Any thoughts as to why some Ensign articles and conference addresses are available in PDF and others are not? Or am I missing something here?

Thank you,
Geoff

Articles in older issues are not available for individual download in PDF form. Your only option is to download entire issues. The links for those issues are http://www.lds.org/Static%20Files/PDF/M ... nload=true and http://media.ldscdn.org/pdf/lds-magazin ... nload=true.

If you really need a PDF of just individual articles you could use a PDF printer (like CutePDF) to print just the pages you want.

Thank you for your response, eblood66. I do not need a PDF version per se; I was looking for the PDF version in order to get the proper page numbers when quoting from or citing these Ensign articles. I did not realize that you can download the entire issue, and I think I will try that approach from now on.

Thank you again,
Geoff

I too am only looking for page numbers.
Is there a standard format for whole issues?
The two examples given are different.

On the old lds.org site, page numbers were included in magazine articles. For the past few years I have gone to the josephsmith.net site where the old versions including page numbers were listed. They are no longer available there so I was hoping to get pdf versions, but they do not seem to available before 2000 or so. For example, I would like to include the page numbers in a reference to the article ``Becoming a Zion Society: Six Principles'' by R. Quinn Gardner in the February 1979 Ensign. And so on. The default for now is finding some more senior member of the Church who has kept paper copies.

The links in LDS tech for downloading whole issues of back magazines is broken. I need some whole issues to search for topics and pictures for primary. I just need to browse old issues.

jeanpitcher wrote:The links in LDS tech for downloading whole issues of back magazines is broken. I need some whole issues to search for topics and pictures for primary. I just need to browse old issues.

Do you have a specific example of an issue you're trying to download, that's missing? What page are you going to to find the magazine issues?

eblood66 wrote:Articles in older issues are not available for individual download in PDF form. Your only option is to download entire issues. The links for those issues are http://www.lds.org/Static%20Files/PDF/M ... nload=true and http://media.ldscdn.org/pdf/lds-magazin ... nload=true.

Links and options have changed since this post was made over 3 years ago. Neither of those links work anymore, but the good news is that PDF versions of the individual talks are now available by clicking the Download button on these pages:

• 2007 November Ensign: Elder Holland, The Only True God and Jesus Christ Whom He Hath Sent
• 2009 May Ensign: Elder Ballard, Learning the Lessons of the Past

jeanpitcher wrote:The links in LDS tech for downloading whole issues of back magazines is broken. I need some whole issues to search for topics and pictures for primary. I just need to browse old issues.

If you're referring to the links in this post (4 posts before yours), then you're right -- those links no longer work.

But you can go to any of the pages for General Conference issues of the Ensign and download full PDFs. For example, you can go to the November 2007 edition of the Ensign. You'll see a page that looks like this: By clicking on the download link at the top you'll have the option to see the full PDF for that edition. The download link and PDF option are indicated with red arrows in the screen shot I attached.

This technique currently only works for conference issues back to 1997.

Hi
I would like a PDF version of oct 1992 ensign. No download options are available under download column on the RHS of the page

sgreenacre wrote:Hi
I would like a PDF version of oct 1992 ensign. No download options are available under download column on the RHS of the page

The Church didn't start using PDFs for magazines until 2001 (the PDF standard was still being developed in 1992) – so, any PDFs from before that point would be scans. The Church hasn't uploaded scans of older Ensigns to LDS.org – there might be copyright restrictions for stock photos, etc., that prevent them from being uploaded, or it may be that it just hasn't been a priority to scan them.

It is odd that with thousands of periodicals available in pdf form, back issues of the Ensign are not. In doing research on the Church in Boston in the 1840s, I came across "Boston's Mormon Landmark" in the November 1973 Ensign, which references illustrations. But only the text is presented! For a visually rich magazine such as the Ensign, the decision to provide researchers only text seems odd. ?? --Andrew

andreweyringkimball wrote:For a visually rich magazine such as the Ensign, the decision to provide researchers only text seems odd.

While it seems odd, the particular example you have given is likely because the Church does not have electronic distribution rights to the illustrations in that issue and either has not been able to obtain them or has determined to spend their resources on other efforts.

There are some wonderful photographs and illustrations in Church magazines before the dawn of the electronic age, and it is sad not to be able to access them through the convenience of modern technology. But for now, I still have to walk over to my bookcase to seem them.

I decided to pin this down as far as what the church currently has available, and I have confirmed that one may download entire PDFs of church magazines as far back as January 2001. Beyond that, audio 'readings' may be downloaded as far back as January 1997. This means that for all publications from January 1971 to December 1996, all that is provided is the online text.

Here's why this is a problem. Obviously it would be easy to cry foul here, but for whatever reason certain articles are omitted from the online list. Take for example Boyd K. Packer's talk "Message to Young Men" from the October 1976 general conference:
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/ ... 1?lang=eng
Not only is this talk entirely absent from the relevant Ensign article:
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1976/11?lang=eng
But I also notice that there is no transcript provided. Every single other talk I have looked at, even in that same session, has a transcript provided in both the ensign article and the general conference link. Why was this specific example omitted? Was it included in the initial publication? One would assume so, but I cannot confirm that, nor read the talk itself without listening to the video and physically typing it out myself.

mdeighton wrote:Take for example Boyd K. Packer's talk "Message to Young Men" from the October 1976 general conference: . . .
Why was this specific example omitted? Was it included in the initial publication?

I do not know why this talk was omitted, but my personal opinion is that it was not published in the conference issue of the Ensign because of the sensitive nature of the topic. The talk was published shortly after the conference as a pamphlet entitled, "For Young Men Only," which was available for many years from the LDS Distribution Center. A few years ago the pamphlet was allowed to go out of print and was not published again.

I don't have a copy of the November 1976 Ensign, but I do have a scan of the February 1977 Liahona in Spanish that reports on the same October 1976 conference. It appears that the talk wasn't published in the Spanish Liahona, so it presumably was never published in the November 1976 Ensign either. If the source for the text at Conference.LDS.org is the magazine report of each talk, that would explain the missing transcript.

sbradshaw wrote:I don't have a copy of the November 1976 Ensign, but I do have a scan of the February 1977 Liahona in Spanish that reports on the same October 1976 conference. It appears that the talk wasn't published in the Spanish Liahona, so it presumably was never published in the November 1976 Ensign either. If the source for the text at Conference.LDS.org is the magazine report of each talk, that would explain the missing transcript.

Huh. Thanks, yeah that does pretty much confirm it.

lajackson wrote:I do not know why this talk was omitted, but my personal opinion is that it was not published in the conference issue of the Ensign because of the sensitive nature of the topic. The talk was published shortly after the conference as a pamphlet entitled, "For Young Men Only," which was available for many years from the LDS Distribution Center. A few years ago the pamphlet was allowed to go out of print and was not published again.

I get why it wasn't published in the Ensign, and yeah they did end up turning it into a pamphlet instead. This is more of an issue recently simply because they didn't just stop printing the pamphlet. Turns out that in 2016, they actually removed the links on the LDS site. It is unusual enough that there's no transcript as it stands, whatever the reason for that, but with the alternative format now removed, should they not have addressed this? It essentially amounts to a general conference address that is unavailable online, that opens them up to accusations of censorship unless this is fixed.

I'm sure the people who removed the link for the retired pamphlet wouldn't have thought of checking back in the 1976 general conference to make sure the text was still online. They might not have even known that it was originally a conference talk. I do agree that it should be fixed, for completeness if nothing else, but also to avoid the concerns you mention. I'd recommend sending feedback using the Feedback link at the bottom of LDS.org – those who manage content will be most likely to see your comments there.

sbradshaw wrote:I'd recommend sending feedback using the Feedback link at the bottom of LDS.org – those who manage content will be most likely to see your comments there.

Welp, dropped one in now. Thanks for the tip, I'll update if I hear anything!

Please help
I will really like to have the September 1972 issue of Ensign magazine in PDF. As I was preparing a timeline for the Institute class, I teach and I found out that this issue was dedicated to México and Central America and has my dad’s testimony on it. He never told me about it, I bet he never new about it, since it as not published to the Liahona. There is no way to ask him, he passed away last April.
So please help me get this issue or even the printed magazine.

toto_tamalochi wrote:Please help
I will really like to have the September 1972 issue of Ensign magazine in PDF. As I was preparing a timeline for the Institute class, I teach and I found out that this issue was dedicated to México and Central America and has my dad’s testimony on it. He never told me about it, I bet he never new about it, since it as not published to the Liahona. There is no way to ask him, he passed away last April.
So please help me get this issue or even the printed magazine.

If it's a single article you're looking for, you might be able to contact the Church History Library and request a scan:
https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org ... t?lang=eng

I found out how to access the PDF version of the Ensign! Yay! I have been trying to figure it out for a while now and am so excited that I discovered how to do it and that The Church still provides a digital copy of the actual magazine. It is very simple. Once you have chosen which month you want to view, on the table of contents page you will see the "download" icon, a down arrow with a horizontal line under it. Click that and it will give you different download options. To download the whole magazine choose Entire Book (PDF) or if you just want a specific page/talk then select that talk from the contents page, once it has come up click the download icon. Choose This Page (PDF). Wa la! There you have it.

What a shame that some older issues are no longer available in PDF. Is it really that hard to keep the record accessible? Very disappointed, and yet, I'm not surprised. Trying to access Ensign 2011 PDF.

momstrum11 wrote: Wed Oct 23, 2024 11:55 am What a shame that some older issues are no longer available in PDF. Is it really that hard to keep the record accessible? Very disappointed, and yet, I'm not surprised. Trying to access Ensign 2011 PDF.

You can find links here, in case it's helpful:
https://archiveviewer.org/collections/en/ensign

2011 Ensigns are available via the Internet Archive (temporarily offline), the Church History Library, and the Church website, including in PDF format.