For users who do not have the time to browse the form on-line, the Virtual FormGuide provides a facility to download an entire meeting. This allows you to download Zip (compressed) files of all the 5 Start Form or 10 Start Form pages for a race meeting. These can then be 'unzipped' by an application linked to your browser. If you prefer, the same application can be used directly on the Zip files. Once 'unzipped' into the appropriate directory on your PC, you can access all the form files through your browser and do with them whatever you would have while on-line.

There are also software developers who provide you with the facility to use TVF form as data input for their programs. You should follow their instructions if you are using these programs. The main supplier is Bet Selector (www.betselector.com.au).

How To Use This Service

1. Create a new directory on your main working disk drive. It can be called anything, but perhaps TVF would be appropriate. Do not create any subdirectories.

2. If you don't already have one, you will need an 'unzip' utility installed on your PC. It is not absolutely necessary (but is very convenient) if you have the unzip utility installed in your browser as the handler for files of type Zip.

3. Before you can gain access to Virtual FormGuide zip files, you must have a current  subscription.

4. Now you are ready to select the ZIP option on the meeting menu for the meeting you are interested in.

4. The contents of a Zip file are a number of HTML files which can be viewed in your browser. There is an Index file which acts as a pointer to all the files in the Zip file. There is one HTML file for each race for the meeting. The file naming convention is trkddmmr.htm where trk is a 3 character track code, dd is the day, mm is the month and r is the race number. Note that races 10, 11 and 12 are numbered a, b and c if they exist.

5. To open a disk based HTML file, just use the Open command in the File menu on your browser. Instead of specifiying a URL, just go to the individual form file you want under the TVF directory.

Service Availability

Zip Files are made available at the time final acceptances are processed for each meeting. This is generally in the early afternoon 2 days before each meeting. All races for Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays are generally processed on Thursday.

Zip Files are archived in the Historical Form archive 2 days after the meeting. All subscribers with a 12 month subscription can access the archive which has Zip files dating back to November 1998.