Picture a Smaller File Size
Q: Our company recently created a detailed product catalog in Word 2010 containing pictures, descriptions and prices for the 175 items we sell. Unfortunately, the resulting document’s file size is 95 megabytes, which makes it impractical for e-mailing or downloading from the Web (which was our intended purpose). Do you have any suggestions for reducing the size of this document?
A: You should consider using Word 2010’s built-in picture compression tool, which can reduce the size of inserted pictures by as much as 90%. To use this feature, click on the picture in Word to select it, and click on the Picture Tools Ribbon tab at the top of the screen. Next, click the Compress Pictures icon circled below.
This action will open the Compress Pictures dialog box (shown below), which will allow you to reduce the picture to a resolution of either 220, 150 or 96 pixels per inch (PPI). Uncheck the box labeled Apply only to this picture to compress all of the pictures in your document at the same time.
Chances are good that the compressed pictures in your document will look about the same to the naked eye, so the quality of your catalog should not be adversely affected. Since the pictures will be 90% smaller, your 95-MB file should fall to less than 10 MB, which should be small enough to quickly download, or send as an e-mail attachment.
More from the JofA:
