Word to PDF size increases!?

[VistaPublish]

When I convert from Word to PDF the document size increases 5x. How do I
prevent this?

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

This is not uncommon. PDF files use formatting commands that are ultimately
plain text--not different in concept from HTML or RTF formatting commands.
PDF files take up a lot of space, with the end result being that PDF files
can be many times larger than the formats used by word processing programs.
This is an inherent cost of using PDF. The benefit, of course, is
printer-ready multi-platform documents that display exactly the same way to
everyone who sees them. The same cannot be said for Word's native document
format.

 

[p0]

When I convert from Word to PDF the document size increases 5x. How do I
prevent this?

Reasons could be:
- the inclusion of fonts
- the quality of images
- bitmap text
- ...

The solution depends on the tool you are using to generate the pdf. If
you are using the Microsoft plugin for Word 2007, you might want to
save as pdf with "Optimize for" set to minimum size in the save as
dialog (also check the options button). If you use Acrobat
Professional, you might want to check out the "Preferences" section in
the Acrobat menu/tab. You should be able to pick a "Minimum size"
setting. For other tools, you have to check the tools yourself.

Also, keep in mind that even changing all those settings might not
result in a smaller file. For example, Word 2007 equations are
efficiently stored as a few characters in the new Word format, while
saved in older versions (Word 97-2003) or other formats (pdf) they are
stored as images. That will always be less efficient and result in a
larger size.

Yves

 

[Graham Mayor]

You can often shrink the PDF by 'printing' it to the PDF driver, though it
will probably lose whatever functionality you had included.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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