I've got a big Word document 3

[BullFrogBill]

Yes, at over 40mb it's quite big and is having a detrimental effect on other applications. It's got loads of images embedded in it, but then again so have other Word doc's I've worked with and they haven't got to this size. Maybe there's a problem image in there somewhere. Is there any utility, or facility within Word, that would allow me to analyse the document and/or track down any images causing the problem?

Thanks,
Tenchy.

 

[SkipVought]

BullFrogBill,

Welcome to Tek-Tips! Ribit!

As you have experienced, size matters!

Why are the objects embedded?

Why not LINK?

Might save you loads of headaches in days to come.

Skip,
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[BullFrogBill]

Hi Skip, Thanks.

Yes, I cold do that but I want to distribute it as a single file, so it's easier if everything is in there.

 

[lhuegele]

Have you searched the HELP for reducing file size? Just go to help inside MS Word and search for "reduce file size" and you will get some answers and several ideas to help reduce them.

After you follow those, if the file still doesn't reduce much, try to copy/paste the contents of the docuemnt into a new Word document and then save-as another name and see if that doesn't help reduce the file size more.

Good luck,

 

[fumei]

If Linking is not viable (and there are legitimate reasons why that may be so), you may want to try creating a fresh document.

Make a blank document, and then copy/paste the contents from your original document. Save it. No guarantee, but it may end up being smaller.

Word is a bit weird that way. It does not have the best graphics handling ability.

BTW: is there any chance you could use less resolution on the images?

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[eyec]

try making thumbnails of all of the images then hyperlink to the larger image.

 

[onedtent]

Hi, I was looking at certain things in Word. Can you look at File, properties, save preview picture. It shouldn't have a checkmark there.

 

[BullFrogBill]

Thnaks for all the advice. I've tried the various possibilities but nothing works. I can't really reduce the resolution. The images are photos and are quite low res already. If I get Adobe Acrobat and save the file as pdf, just for distribution, will the pdf version be any smaller?

 

[BullFrogBill]

Hi, There's no checkmark in Preview Picture.

 

[eyec]

size would not matter in pdf format as much as it does in Word.

the 2 programs handle things entirely different. Adobe would load it in view mode and Word would load the whole program - hence it dogs the whole system.

i have opend pdf files much larger with less resource usage than word files.

 

[Baffo93]

The simplest way would be to make sure that the images you are embedding are JPEG files, rather than Bitmap. A Bitmap screenshot can be 2MB, where the same image saved as JPEG can be 120KB (I just tested this using Paint and got these figures).

If you are using images already supplied to you and they are large, then use a tool like GIMP to change the X and Y dimensions of the image, rather than just resizing in Word as this doesn't make the image size smaller - it just makes it look smaller.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[dodomcsc]

BullFrogBill,

I used to run into this kind of problem with large file sizes from graphics when I worked at a Help Desk for a large, international law firm.

One of the things you can do, though time intensive, is to try the following:

Select an image from the document.
Click Edit, Cut
Let the insertion point cursor stay where it is, then do Edit, Paste Special.

What is interesting is that the default for if you just 'pasted' the image back into the document would be highlighted. Sometimes you may be surprised by the format that would be pasted in....Bitmap, HTML, etc.

When you do the Paste Special, choose a format like JPEG (JPG) or PNG. Save your document and check the file size.

For instance, when I created just a sample test document, I inserted a bitmap into the document and saved it. The document was approximately 2.5 MB for this one page document. However when I did the Cut and then Paste Special and chose JPG, then saved the document, the one page document fell from 2.5 MB down to 54 KB in size. Pretty dramatic difference.

Bear in mind, that if you do Paste Special and it messes up the resolution of the document you can try other formats and see if they provide the quality expected while at the same time lowering the ultimate file size.

This technique saved my butt....and some of the attorneys' as well time after time.

dodomfcg

 

[onedtent]

what about "allow fast save"? it should be unchecked.

 

[dodomcsc]

Good point onedtent, but it probably won't have much effect on the final file size of the document. The allow fast saves has to do with the order in which the data within the document is saved.

From what I understand of this function, when you turn on allow fast saves, this just makes it so that any added data to the document is saved at the end of the binary file instead of where the actual edits within the document were made.

This has a tendency to make the document less 'stable' and more likely to corrupt, especially if the creator of the document hasn't used Styles for formatting the document and has applied direct formatting throughout the document.

When you turn off allow fast saves, edits to the document aren't appended to the end of the binary file. Instead the document is saved from beginning to end in one-fell-swoop (as we say in the mountains). This makes for added document stability.

Allow fast saves makes it so that if you edited paragraph 3 out of 100 paragraphs total and also formatted that edit without using styles, those edits, including the additional binary language needed for the formatting, would be placed at the end of the document. When you opened, or printed the document, the computer would be reading paragraph 1 and 2 and paragraph 3 up to the edits and then would have to skip to the end of the binary file to read the edits, then once done, on with reading paragraph 4 and so on.

If you turn off allow fast saves, the computer and program (Word in this instance) reads the binary file from beginning to end. Of course if direct formatting is applied, the computer and program have to read all that additional information, whereas if you setup the formatting using Styles, then the computer and program only have to read the formatting information once, then pull that information from memory to apply throughout the document without having to read all that individually applied formatting information.

So, ultimately, turning off fast saves AND using Styles for formatting will cause the binary file size to be somewhat less, but won't really matter concerning the graphics contained within the image.

Too much information? Probably so! lol

dodomfcg

 

[BullFrogBill]

Thanks again for the advice. Here's what I found - accidentally. While scrolling up and down the document, as a particular jpg image scolled past, the scrolling rate slowed down. The jpg in question was just over 1mb, but when I removed it from the Word document, the size of the overall doc was reduced from over 40mb to less than 30mb! I saved the offending jpg as a png. This reduced its size to less than 100kb, so I put it back into the document. I'm now looking at other jpg's to see if I can get further reductions. Thanks for the advice about Paste Special. I'll try that as well.

BullFrogBill.

 

[fumei]

dodomfcg, excellent post, and a clear explanation for not using Fast Save AND for using Styles.

Good one. Star for that.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[SkipVought]

Good info, dodomfcg! ==> *

Skip,
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[dodomcsc]

Thanks Gerry & Skip!

Doug
dodomfcg