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how to reduce the size of PDF

Anonymous
2011-08-13T10:23:26+00:00

In previous versions of Word, when you save a file as a PDF it greatly reduces the size.  I find that using Office for Mac, when I save a file as PDF it is the same size or even larger!  How can I reduce the size of the file?'

Thanks

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-08-14T15:39:17+00:00

    Hello Judy Frater,

    Thanks for posting to the Microsoft Answers forums! Typically, PDF files are larger than original documents, Are you saving your files as PDFS using the following method? Do you have a specific example of when saving a document as a PDF made it significantly larger?

    • Click File and then Print.
    • In the Print menu you will see a PDF button in the lower left hand corner, click on this button and choose Save as PDF.
    • In the Save window that appears, type the file a name and add any additional information you wish such as Author, Subject or Keywords
    • If this file will be used on a Windows machine remove the check mark from Hide Extension.
    • Click Save

    Do you have a specific example of when saving a document as a PDF made it significantly larger?

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-08-15T11:19:20+00:00

    Just to expand on what Adam says:

    Word 2011 saves in .docx format, which is normally smaller than the size of the obsolete .doc format.  The new format is not only compact to begin with, it is also compressed on save.

    If you take an old .doc file of, say, 528 kb and save it as PDF, you would expect it to come out at around 709 kb (I just tried it in Word 2004).

    If you take the same document and save it from Word 2011 as a .docx file, it will be smaller: 480 kb in my case.  The PDF from that file may be slightly larger than the one from Word 2004, depending on what is in the document.

    Word 2011, can publish a higher resolution of graphics to PDF, and if it does, the file size will indeed be larger.

    Word 2011 has a new option on the File menu to "Reduce file size".  Using that same file, I reduced the size of the .docx to 428 kb, and the PDF to 520 kb.

    Generally, it's the pictures that do the damage.  However, if you also use lots of large fonts that have to be embedded, that will push the file size up.

    This isn't a defect: if you get a larger file size, it's because you are including more quality.  If you want to reduce the file size, you have the option to lower the quality of the PDF.  But you should always expect a PDF to be quite a bit larger than a .docx: it was never designed to be "small" :-)

    Hope this helps

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-03-02T00:31:35+00:00

    I am having a very similar problem as Fan_Zh. Word is taking a 500kB docx file (which has many equations) and is making a 30MB PDF when using the "Save as PDF" function. Analyzing the PDF with Adobe Acrobat 9.0 shows that the same fonts are being embedded hundreds of times and the font information takes up ~90% of the document size. The Acrobat Pro PDF optimizer tool does not allow me to un-embed the redundant fonts. In fact, it does not even recognize that they are embedded!

    Is there any way to prevent multiple instances of the same font from being embedded?

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-03-02T04:43:55+00:00

    I'm glad I'm not the only one with the problem.  Using the DocX option of reducing file size and then making a PDF usually does the trick.  Belated thanks for that hint.  But the file has to be DocX to avail.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-11-11T05:54:08+00:00

    Hi Adam,

    I am also having problem saving docx file as pdf. It's a docx file with text and table, but no pictures at all. The original docx file is 132Kb while the pdf file is 1.2Mb. Do you have an idea how I can deal with this?

    Thanks a lot!

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