Hi Elaine:
Try this: Carefully select all except the last paragraph mark, copy, create
a new blank document, paste into the new document and save. What size do
you have now? If the size shrinks dramatically, you had a corrupt document:
it's OK now
A 320-page document containing nothing but text is about 2 MB if you use
only styles for formatting. It will be a little larger (maybe three MB) if
you use direct formatting.
Now try this: Make a copy of the document, remove ALL of the pictures and
save: what size do you have? The difference is the pictures. Use the
technique described below to shrink them.
Make a copy of the document.
Copy the charts out of Word into a graphics program, save them as GIF, then
delete them from the copy and re-insert them as GIFs. The amount of the
file occupied by graphics should shrink to about one-tenth of its original
size.
'Colour space' is a confusing topic. In computing, "colours" are numbers.
The larger numbers you use, the more colours you can have in a single
picture. But the larger the picture is as a file. To a computer, each
different shade of a colour is an individual colour. A photograph of a face
may be mostly skin-tone, but that's not one colour, it is thousands or
hundreds of thousands of individual shades.
Charts, graphs etc do not need many colours: often, you can express an
entire chart in 16 colours. You can use small numbers to do that, and
dramatically reduce your file-size. Converting those charts to GIF
automatically reduces the number of colours in them to a maximum of 256 (GIF
format will not describe any more than that) and in doing so, automatically
makes the file one tenth its former size. For charts and graphs, it's not
"colours" you need to make them look good, it's resolution (or definition).
GIF is a format that discards colour information but preserves definition,
so things that need to look sharp such as screen-captures and charts
continue to be sharp. You can afford to use small numbers for the colour
space, because the colours were not there in the first place.
If your graphics program supports it, save the files in PNG instead of GIF.
PNG also preserves resolution at the expense of colour, but PNG allows you
to specify how many colours you want. If you choose "16 colours", chances
are your chart's colours will remain unchanged, but your file will be one
twentieth the size.
For photographs, different rules apply. There, you need to preserve the
colours so you get accurate skin tones. But you can afford to discard the
resolution. Use JPEG for photos: JPEG discards definition to preserve the
colours.
Replacing those charts with GIF or PNG and deleting the originals should
reduce your file to half or one quarter its size (you will see the colour
space shrink also).
Try that first, and come back to us if you still need to shrink the
document. Using styles on a document that did not start off that way means
a bit of work. Learning styles will take some time. And you may not
produce much reduction in file size (we can't tell without trying it).
Hope this helps
Hi John,
My audit space usuage says that the Excel charts are taking up too much
space. I just copy the charts in excel and paste into word. What is
the best way to import or shrink the sizes of these charts so they are
a minimum size? The charts by themselves are small, it's just when
they go into Word that they balloon up.
Also, in my acrobat audit space usuage, it says that color spaces are
taking up 17%. What is that and what can I do to shrink that number?
What is track changes and how do I check it?
What is the difference between styles and direct formattting? I used
headers and sub headers if that is what you mean. But, when I wanted
to change colors and fonts the subheaders would not work, so I just did
it manually, and did not use the bookmark for a lot of it. So, what do
I do to use styles to shrink this document?
Many thanks!
Elaine
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John McGhie <
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Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410
