Why are my Word 2007 files HUGE?

[willarmstrong]

I have been creating resumes and cover letters in Word 2007 on Vista for
several months now and since mid August my .docx AND .doc files have increase
from less than 300KB to over 3MB! I am unable to upload them to resume
services that limit file size to either 300 - 800KB, but require the .doc
format. Even the PDF's created by Word 2007 are over 500KB (before August
they were under 300). Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Is there a
solution other than purchasing some compression tool?

I have tried every method I have seen posted to save the files and to
resolve this issue, but to no avail. PLEASE HELP!!!

 

[Yves Dhondt]

I have been creating resumes and cover letters in Word 2007 on Vista for
several months now and since mid August my .docx AND .doc files have
increase
from less than 300KB to over 3MB! I am unable to upload them to resume
services that limit file size to either 300 - 800KB, but require the .doc
format. Even the PDF's created by Word 2007 are over 500KB (before August
they were under 300). Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Is there a
solution other than purchasing some compression tool?

I have tried every method I have seen posted to save the files and to
resolve this issue, but to no avail. PLEASE HELP!!!

Without you telling us what those methods were, it is pretty hard to make
new/other suggestions.

Have you tried using "Inspect document" to remove unnecessary data?

Have you tried copying everything except the final paragraph mark into a new
document and save that document?

Do you have (a lot of) images in your work? If so, are they sized properly?
There is no point in storing a 2000 by 1000 pixel image inside a Word
document if you only display it as a 200 by 100 pixel image. Are your images
compressed properly? Meaning, when you inserted them, were they png or jpeg
files? Or bmp files? The latter aren't compressed at all and can blow up
your document.

If all else fails, you can try to save your document as a docx (2007
format). Then change the extension to zip and check out the contents. It
might help in locating what files inside your document are larger than
expected. If nothing catches your eye, and you have some xml knowledge, you
could dig into document.xml to see if something odd is happening there. But
that really should be a last resort.

Yves