Word Document Size Increase

[thawfield]

Does anyone know the reason that a 5MB word document would jump to
13MB document after a few minor changes? The file was originall
around 13MB. When I first saved the doc to my desktop it went fro
13MB to around 5MB. ???? I did a few minor edits and saved after eac
one to monitor the size. It was staying around 5MB for a while but al
of a sudden it jumped to 13MB! There are a few screenshots within th
document, however they are all .gif's. Any thoughts

 

[richiwatts]

This happens a lot when there are images in Word. I use a 3rd party too
while translating and this happens a lot

Turn off autosave while working with the file and this should stop it.

or

Select everything, copy and paste into a new document and this shoul
get rid of all the stuff that Word is saving in the background

Hope this helps.

Rich

 

[Joseph Anderson]

Accept revisions (changes) in document! Word keeps all changes (I think) you
made to your document in the event you want to return to an earlier version.
Make a copy of your document (just in case) then go to View Menu, choose
Markup, and click Accept Changes. My experience is limited to ancient Word 6
but accepting tracking changes worked well to reduce our document sizes.
2003 is confusing...so many options...so much power...so much confusion.

 

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

6. Embedded graphics: When feasible, it is preferable to link the graphics.

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

 

[thawfield]

How does disabling some of these auto save features help in reducing th
size of the document? (i.e. Fast Saves, versioning, True type fonts
etc.) I'm just trying to determine what exactly happens in th
backround when any save occurrs on a document.

In addition, what would be the best way to go about linking th
graphics in a document, and how would that affect converting it to
PDF?

Thanks for all your replies!

T

 

[thawfield]

How does disabling some of these auto save features help in reducing th
size of the document? (i.e. Fast Saves, versioning, True type fonts
etc.) I'm just trying to determine what exactly happens in th
backround when any save occurrs on a document.

In addition, what would be the best way to go about linking th
graphics in a document, and how would that affect converting it to
PDF?

Thanks for all your replies!

T

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Fast Saves makes a document larger temporarily by appending changes to the
end. Eventually, when a full save is done, the document size will be back to
"normal," but meanwhile the document is at risk (Fast Saves is one of the
top three causes of document corruption). Versioning puts several versions
of the document in a single file, which obviously makes it larger. Embedding
fonts adds the size of the font file to the document and is rarely justified
(certainly not for common fonts).

More recent versions of Word do such a good job of compressing graphics that
they don't always increase document size appreciably, but linking is still
recommended if there are a lot of large graphics. To do this, when you use
Insert | Picture | From File, click the arrow beside Insert and choose "Link
to File." I'm not sure how this impacts PDF creation, but I would imagine
that, provided the graphics are available when the PDF is created (the links
are still valid), they would be embedded when the PDF is generated.