Large file size for word doc after adding sections/header & footer

[Stevie]

I am creating a directory for my son's school. I used mail merge to get the
info in alpha order with phone, address, etc. That Word doc was ~300KB. Now I
am doing some formatting so that it looks good. I have added a section or
two, added headers and footers, not much more than than. Now my file size is
~3MB. HELP! What is making the file size so big? I had email addresses for
all of the parents, so I took out all of the hyperlinks, but that didn't make
much of a dent in the file size. This has happened to me before with large,
complex documents, but this is relatively simple and I'm trying to figure out
what I'm doing that makes it so big.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Stevie

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

There are a number of reasons for excessive file size, including:

1. Fast Saves: Disable this at on the Save tab of Tools | Options.

2. Preview Picture: Clear the check box on the Summary tab of File |
Properties.

3. Versions (File | Versions): Make sure "Automatically save version on
close" is not turned on.

4. Revisions (Tools | Track Changes):
Highlight Changes: Make sure "Highlight changes on screen" is turned on
(or that "Final Showing Markup" is displayed).
Accept/Reject Changes: If "Accept All" or "Reject All" is available then
revisions are present; accept or reject all changes, then turn Track Changes
off.

5. Keep track of formatting (Tools | Options | Edit). This is reportedly a
major cause of file bloat in Word 2002 and above.

6. Embedded True Type fonts (Tools | Options | Save); embedding fonts should
be avoided wherever possible.

7. Embedded linguistic data (Tools | Options | Save).

8. Embedded graphics: When feasible, it is preferable to link the graphics.
That is, when you insert the graphic, click the arrow beside Insert in the
Picture dialog and choose Link to File rather than Insert or Insert and
Link.

9. Embedded objects: These are even worse than ordinary graphics saved with
the document. If you see an { EMBED } code, the graphic is an OLE object.
Unless you need to be able to edit the object in place, unlink it using
Ctrl+Shift+F9.

10. File format: Make sure you are saving as a Word document; in some cases
..rtf (Rich Text Format) files are significantly larger than .doc files.

11. Document corruption: See
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm.

 

[Stevie]

Hi Suzanne,
Thanks so much for your insight. Most of the things that you outlined as
potentially causing "file bloat" were already unchecked in my copy of Word,
but I read the article on document corruption and I believe that is the issue
here. I was able to follow the instructions (save file as html and save back
again to Word) and it got the file size back down to ~300K. Eureka! So my
document was likely corrupted (like I said, I have had this problem before,
so it makes sense), and perhaps it is my Normal.doc file. I sometimes get
asked to save it--not knowing why--but this might be related? Unfortunately,
I lost a LOT of formatting when I went back and forth, so I am not sure it is
entirely worth starting over, but at least I have a reason.
Thanks again, so very much!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In many cases just copying all but the last paragraph mark and pasting to a
new document would leave a lot of the excess behind, though if the document
had more than one section, you'd need to remove section breaks as well (and
that could indeed result in loss of a lot of document-level formatting). But
if you save to regular HTML (as opposed to filtered or single-file), you
should retain most of the formatting.