May 19, 2013

Reduce Microsoft Office document sizes

There are many ways to achieve reduced file sizes for your Office documents like Word or PPTs. This is very helpful if you are sharing the documents by email – enabling you to meet the etiquette of not clogging others’ mailboxes.

Tips to reduce document sizes
  1. Compress pictures
  2. Do not paste snapshots directly
  3. Turn off versions (revisions)
  4. Turn off Preview Picture
  5. Turn off Fast Saves
  6. Embed true type fonts only if required
Tips 1 and 2 turned out the most helpful as I found on lot of situations.

How to compress pictures?

  • Select a picture
  • Select “Picture Tools” on the window bar
  • Select “Format” section
  • Select “Compress Pictures” option.
  • Choose a resolution of 96 ppi (pixels per inch) – unless you want your recipient to print the images you sent over!

Note that the way to do these settings might vary a bit depending on the Office version (2003 or 2007 or later).

Do not paste snapshots directly

A common practice while embedding snapshots is to perform either “Print Screen” or “Alt + Print Screen”, and then paste it directly into your Word / PPT. However, the image is copied in BMP format in this case – leading to large document size. Instead, paste the snapshot into an image editor like MS Paint, save it into a format like JPEG & then insert the JPEG into your Office document.

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