Office documents do not compress very well from some computers

[DenverDan]

We need to compress large Office documents, for example, Word, Excel, and
Powerpoint docs that have lots of charts and pictures. About half our PC's
can compress a 180MB Powerpoint to 8MB. The other half can only compress it
to 171MB. The results are similar in Word and Excel. I am wondering what
kinds of internal calls Office makes to compress? What kinds of things might
block compression? All PC's have Office 2003, although how they were
installed may have varied (some from CD, some pushed out, etc.) We cannot
find any common factor to either group and are really puzzled. First off,
can anyone else duplicate this problem or are we the only ones having trouble
compressing??

Here's how we do it: open the document > right click a picture > format
picture > picture tab > compress > apply to all pictures in document

change resolution = web/screen > options = compress pictures & delete

cropped areas of pictures > OK

Any tips would be appreciated.

BTW, I did try copying the 180MB PowerPoint to a compressed folder. When I
look at its properties, it says it took it down to 176MB. I also tried
zipping it up. That only got it down to 179MB. So the PC's that
successfully compress it to 8MB must be stripping out lots of metadata or
embedded but unused sections of objects and the others must be failing to
strip excess data out and just trying to compress the whole thing. I think!
But what could be preventing some of them from doing the job correctly?

 

[Harlan Grove]

We need to compress large Office documents, for example, Word, Excel, and
Powerpoint docs that have lots of charts and pictures. About half our PC's
can compress a 180MB Powerpoint to 8MB. The other half can only compress
it to 171MB. . . .

....

Charts and pictures are very different in terms of their binary
representation on disk. Pictures in JPEG and similar formats are
already compressed, so you shouldn't expect much additional
compression. Charts may store metadata which could be highly
redundant, so charts should more often compress to small fractions of
their original byte sizes.

However, if you mean that different machines achieve different
compression ratios for the same files, compression ratios can vary
with the amount of free memory, so the more free memory you start
with, the more compression you should achieve. However, this isn't
likely to explain the big differences you describe.

zipping it up. That only got it down to 179MB. . . .

....

FWIW, WinRAR and 7-Zip using their respective native compressed file
formats generally achieve better compression ratios that WinZip, PKZip
and other archivers using standard .ZIP format.

 

[Leon Hao [MSFT]]

Hi Denver,

If I understood properly, the PowerPoint presentation is extremely large
and the Compress feature does not help to reduce the size a lot.

Is that correct?

Denver, as Harlan said, the compress result may be various depending on the
system status and picture format, etc. Many factors are involved. It's hard
to say that something is affecting the compress process.

Besides, there are many other elements that can affect the file size. Here
is a list for your reference:

Embedded Objects
Raster Graphics
Stuff on masters
Saving as earlier-version PowerPoint files
Fast Saves
Pasted or Drag/Dropped Graphics
Clip Gallery pictures
Mysterious, unseen elements
Embedded Fonts
Review features

I strongly recommend you to take a look at the following web site:

Why are my PowerPoint files so big? What can I do about it?
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00062.htm

(Note: This response contains a reference to a third party World Wide Web
site. Microsoft is providing this information as a convenience to you.
Microsoft does not control these sites and has not tested any software or
information found on these sites; therefore, Microsoft cannot make any
representations regarding the quality, safety, or suitability of any
software or information found there. There are inherent dangers in the use
of any software found on the Internet, and Microsoft cautions you to make
sure that you completely understand the risk before retrieving any software
from the Internet.)

Hope the information helps!


Regards,

Leon Hao

Microsoft Online Partner Support
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
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[DenverDan]

Thanks, Harlan and Leon. Since we have some PC's that can consistently
reduce the 180mb Powerpoint to 8mb and many others that reduce it to 171mb I
am looking for things that could vary from PC to PC. We have ruled out
Office patch level (we formatted a test bench PC and installed Office from CD
and didn't patch it - it compressed to 171mb.) My PC is one of the ones that
quickly shrinks it to 8mb. Neither group of PCs have fast save enabled.
Neither embed fonts.

This problem came to my attention when I upgraded someone from Office 2000
to 2003. She was used to compressing the massive PowerPoints that she
creates each month which probably have every kind of embedded, linked,
inserted, and pasted object know to man in them. After we moved her to 2003
we discovered she had lost her godlike powers. That's when I began checking
around and so far have found 13 PC's that compress it to 171mb and 6 that
compress it to 8mb.

The user who submitted the helpdesk ticket would like to be able to compress
like in the good old days! Right now, she is sending things to me to
compress. I would very much like to fix her problem too!

 

[Harlan Grove]

Thanks, Harlan and Leon. Since we have some PC's that can consistently
reduce the 180mb Powerpoint to 8mb and many others that reduce it to 171mb I
am looking for things that could vary from PC to PC. We have ruled out
Office patch level (we formatted a test bench PC and installed Office from CD
and didn't patch it - it compressed to 171mb.) My PC is one of the ones that
quickly shrinks it to 8mb. Neither group of PCs have fast save enabled.
Neither embed fonts.

....

Back to different amounts of free memory on the different machines.
Also, you'd need to check which processes are running and DLLs loaded
on each of the different PCs, then look for similarities among PCs
that produce similar compression and differences between PCs that
produce dissimilar compression. You should also check which Windows
hotfixes have been applied to all these machines.

Also are all of these machines basically the same or are there
differences in manufacturer, model, BIOS version, free disk space,
page file size, RAM, bus speed, attached peripherals, etc.?

If you're truly seeing more than an order of magnitude difference
between different machines running the same software, I suspect this
boils down either to hardware, free system resources or something
really esoteric like some odd background process tripping over a
memory segmentation boundary that doesn't crash anything but does
screw up dynamic memory allocation.

 

[Leon Hao [MSFT]]

Hi Denver,

I totally agree with Harlan's suggestions. Please try that and if something
is unclear, welcome to get back to me.

Have a nice weekend!


Regards,

Leon Hao

Microsoft Online Partner Support
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
====================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
====================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[DenverDan]

EUREKA!!! I finally got it!! Apparently instead of inserting jpg's from
files, the users are copying and "paste-special"-ing pictures into PowerPoint
and a ton of code gets put in with them. Maybe it inserts a mini-version of
Photo Editor along with the jpg for editing purposes?? Here is the
solution. IF Office 97 Photo Editor is still on the computer, Powerpoint can
quickly compress the 180MB file to 8mb. I guess that somehow allows it to
strip out all the rest of the garbage. If Office 97 Photo Editor is
uninstalled, the compression gets the file down to 176mb - apparently that is
how much it can compress the jpg's, but the rest of the code is left intact.
BTW, PowerPoint has all the converters and filters installed, but they don't
help at all.

 

[Emily Lin [MSFT]]

Hi Denver,

I appreciate the information you shared with us. If you need further
assistance on this particular issue, please get back to me at any time and
we are glad to provide help.

Have a nice day!

Best regards,

Emily Lin
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
======================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from this issue.
======================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
======================================================


--------------------
| Thread-Topic: Office documents do not compress very well from some
computers
| thread-index: AceiPkkSjhPOV5Z9Rr+0kEnh15DOKw==
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| Subject: Re: Office documents do not compress very well from some
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| Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 15:11:20 -0700
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| X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.office.misc
|
| EUREKA!!! I finally got it!! Apparently instead of inserting jpg's from
| files, the users are copying and "paste-special"-ing pictures into
PowerPoint
| and a ton of code gets put in with them. Maybe it inserts a mini-version
of
| Photo Editor along with the jpg for editing purposes?? Here is the
| solution. IF Office 97 Photo Editor is still on the computer, Powerpoint
can
| quickly compress the 180MB file to 8mb. I guess that somehow allows it
to
| strip out all the rest of the garbage. If Office 97 Photo Editor is
| uninstalled, the compression gets the file down to 176mb - apparently
that is
| how much it can compress the jpg's, but the rest of the code is left
intact.
| BTW, PowerPoint has all the converters and filters installed, but they
don't
| help at all.
| --
| DD
|
|
| "Leon Hao [MSFT]" wrote:
|
| > Hi Denver,
| >
| > I totally agree with Harlan's suggestions. Please try that and if
something
| > is unclear, welcome to get back to me.
| >
| > Have a nice weekend!
| >
| >
| > Regards,
| >
| > Leon Hao
| >
| > Microsoft Online Partner Support
| > Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
| > ====================================================
| > When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader
so
| > that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
| > ====================================================
| > This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.
| >
| >
|