4 Ways You Can Reduce PDF File Size

Format converters to the rescue!

PDF file compression is an option thanks to a variety of online format conversion services, such as CleverPDF.

By changing from the standard PDF format to a different one, such as Word, you could cut down on how much space a given document occupies.

This will of course depend on the nature of the source PDF; for example, if it is packed with large multimedia files, rather than plain text and tables, conversion may be just the first step in the size reduction process.

Save PDFs appropriately

A quick way to bring down the size of any PDF is to save it as a Reduced Size variant, which can be done within Adobe Acrobat itself from the ‘Save as Other’ menu in the ‘File’ drop-down.

In this instance the size reduction is carried out automatically, and the most obvious changes will occur to any images that are embedded, as the quality will be scaled back to save space.

You can also make use of the PDF Optimizer tool to take a more tailored approach to size reduction during saving. This lets you see which elements are responsible for the largest proportions of the document’s total size, and you can then determine which ones you want to edit or alter to bring this down on your own terms.

Whatever you do, always save a full sized backup before making any alterations so that you have the flexibility to roll back to a previous version if you are not happy with any of the changes.

Adjust settings when publishing

Plenty of people create PDFs not in Acrobat itself, but by publishing Word files in this format and using Microsoft’s integrated tools to achieve this.

Once again you have the option of changing a setting when you go to publish the Word doc as a PDF to slash the amount of space it takes up, making it more suitable for sharing online, which is increasingly important today. To do this, simply select the ‘Minimize size’ option as part of the optimization sub-section of the Save As menu, which will do a decent job of shrinking down unwieldy files with minimal fuss.

Export individual pages or elements

If you just need one part of a PDF and do not need to share the entire document, you can select the section or page you want and export it as the file format of your choice.

Whether you want it as a DOCX file or an HTML file, this is a straightforward option that should also keep the output file small and convenient, whether you are using it for personal or remote work purposes.

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Making PDFs smaller is advantageous for a number of reasons, but you need to be proactive in your efforts to achieve this or else your documents will remain larger and less convenient to use.

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