Surprising file size increase from 2000 to 2002

[JenS]

My file got bigger. LOTS bigger. I didn't change it except to open my Word
2000 file in Word 2002 and then save it, and it went from 3.5 Mb to 6.7 Mb.

Here are some of the things that are NOT wrong because I've checked them:
Fast saves is OFF
Preview picture is OFF
Versions is OFF
I have tried "Open and repair" and that takes about 300K off but that's not
really a lot better.
Accepting all tracked changes and re-saving the file appears to add back the
300K I saved by doing the "Open and repair."
TrueType fonts are NOT embedded
Smart tags and linguistic data are NOT embedded
There are no graphics in the document (there were a couple small ones in the
original but I took them out).
File is being saved as Word Document

Saving the file as a web page and then saving it back to a Word document
made the file size grow to 8.6Mb.

Removing all of the section breaks and copying all but the last few
paragraphs into the new document made no difference.

The document is 180+ pages and is mostly a lot of simple (not embedded)
tables.

I will be eternally grateful to whomever can help me with this. It is not
just this one document, but it appears that many other of my documents from
Word 2000 are doing the same thing. I found something on the knowledge base
that appears to address a very similar issue for Word 2003, and says a fix
for it was included in SP2, but apparently the only person who has this
problem in Word 2002 is me. =(

P.S. If I zip up the files, the original goes from 3.5Mb to 348K and the
Word 2002 version goes from 6.7Mb to 441K. I'm not sure if this information
is useful, but it was interesting to me.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?SmVuUw==?=,

My file got bigger. LOTS bigger. I didn't change it except to open my Word
2000 file in Word 2002 and then save it, and it went from 3.5 Mb to 6.7 Mb.

Saving the file as a web page and then saving it back to a Word document
made the file size grow to 8.6Mb.

Interesting. How about saving to RTF, closing, then re-opening and saving
again as a Word document?

The document is 180+ pages and is mostly a lot of simple (not embedded)
tables.

By not embedded, I assume you mean they were created in Word and not in
Excel or some other app?

Word's table capabilities and structures were changed significantly in
Word 2002, what you're seeing may well be related. And a Word 2002
document will be larger than a Word 2000 document.

There is a test you can perform, just to see if it makes a difference. I'm
assuming that these tables are fairly straight forward (few if any merged
cells or paragraphs in the cells). Use Table/Convert/Table to Text to
remove the table structures from the document. Now reverse the process
using Table/Convert/Text to Table. Does this affect the file size?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[JenS]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?SmVuUw==?=,

Interesting. How about saving to RTF, closing, then re-opening and saving
again as a Word document?

The rtf file is 12Mb, then when I save it back to a .doc it goes back to the
same size it was.

By not embedded, I assume you mean they were created in Word and not in
Excel or some other app?

Actually, I meant that I wasn't using Word's nested tables (why didn't I say
that? I dunno), but it's also true that they didn't come from another app.

Word's table capabilities and structures were changed significantly in
Word 2002, what you're seeing may well be related. And a Word 2002
document will be larger than a Word 2000 document.

Larger, I expected. Twice as large, I didn't expect. =)

There is a test you can perform, just to see if it makes a difference. I'm
assuming that these tables are fairly straight forward (few if any merged
cells or paragraphs in the cells). Use Table/Convert/Table to Text to
remove the table structures from the document. Now reverse the process
using Table/Convert/Text to Table. Does this affect the file size?

When I said a lot of tables I meant 50+. So I did not try this experiment
on all of them, I just picked the 15 or so biggest. I converted them to text
and saved the doc, and it was about 2.5 Mb. Then I converted them back, and
the doc went back to about its original size.

So it looks like maybe Microsoft has just changed the table implementation
so that it more than doubles the size from what it was in Word 2000. If
true, I think that was unwise. It doesn't matter how big the file is on
disk, but it really does matter how much memory it takes up and how long it
takes to e-mail/ftp it.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)


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Thank you so much for your help! I hadn't thought about converting the
tables to text and then back.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?SmVuUw==?=,

So I did not try this experiment
on all of them, I just picked the 15 or so biggest. I converted them to text
and saved the doc, and it was about 2.5 Mb. Then I converted them back, and
the doc went back to about its original size.

So it looks like maybe Microsoft has just changed the table implementation
so that it more than doubles the size from what it was in Word 2000. If
true, I think that was unwise. It doesn't matter how big the file is on
disk, but it really does matter how much memory it takes up and how long it
takes to e-mail/ftp it.

No question. They're also much slower to work with in Word 2002 and later
<sigh>. For tranmitting, I do recommend ZIPping the files, in any case.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail