Large email file size when using Word with Outlook

[joeswakingup]

I'm trying to help my 95-year-old grandfather shrink his emails. He uses
Office 2003 with Outlook Express as his email client and Word as his word
processor for emails. He likes to insert photos (.jpg) into his emails to
make them look good - and they do. Using Word, he clicks "Insert-Picture-From
File..." and inserts the photo he wants - then sizes it to make the printed
version look good. No graphic file he uses is larger than half a megabyte,
but once he hits the send button, the file grows to over 1MB - his largest
file was 16MB.

I deconstructed what I could of his emails and I find at least two graphics
included - a jpeg file of less than 20K and a much larger png file. Only one
graphic is showing - the jpeg file, but the underlying png file makes the
file grow significantly. AND - when I forward his messages on to my wife, the
file grows even more. When she forwards, the file size grows more. Each
forward grows the file by 25% or more until, in one instance, a 2MB file grew
to over 10MB by the time it got to the last forwarded person.

That is totally unacceptable and I'm sure is a setting in Word - because I'm
using Outlook and the files size grows for me, too.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
JB

 

[Anne Troy]

Tell grandfather to resize the photos BEFORE inserting. Programs have a
tendancy to save the original file size AND the "after sizing" file, etc.
Get him Irfanview or something: www.irfanview.com
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.piersontech.com
www.mrexcel.com

 

[joeswakingup]

Thanks, Anne. We'll give that a shot. Funny, though, that he did not
experience this problem until after he upgraded from Office XP to Office
2003.

Lesson - sometimes "upgrades" are not really upgrades. I think I'll stick
with my Office XP.

Again, thanks,
JB