Word and Pictures

[TheNoocH]

I have a word document that has 9 images in it...the images total to 339KB but the file size of the word document is 1821KB....
other than linking the pictures (rather than having them embedded) is there any way to get the file size smaller (ie closer to the 339KB)...
thanks

EDIT***
here's more info that will hopefully help...
i'm scanning pages from a book
the book has text and images
i run it through OCR
when the ocr saves the file (note: different example than one above) it's 776KB
if i go into word and just make a minor change (eg add a carriage return at the end of the document) and save it shows up as 2276KB....

any help would be great...i'd hate to have these large sizes if i could prevent it...

 

[gwkenny]

The format your scanner imports pictures into Word is not the same when you save directly to file. Thus you get wildly different file sizes.

Try the following:

1) Click the picture in Word and choose copy. Then press the delete key to remove the picture. Then Edit/Paste Special, and paste it as a picture(jpeg).

Do this for all your images. Save the file. Check the file size.

2) Right click on the picture, choose "Format Picture". Lower left hand side of the dialog box is a button "Compress". Press this button.

Choose all pictures in the document, and then choose print resolution (If you choose screen resolution, and then print, it's very grainy.

Click okay or compress or whatever.

Note, that when you do this, your picture might resize. If it does, immediately hit Undo. Repeat the steps again, and your picture will be compressed but not resize the second time (another nice bug, but I think they fixed this in 2003).

3) If your file is still incredibly huge, I'd start with a whole new file, just import the pictures. Then if that file is acceptable, copy in parts of the original file a few pages at a time. Some object in it is eating all the memory (9 times out of 10, it'll be a section divider, the other times it's some weird picture object).

 

[TheNoocH]

gwkenny,
thanks so much for the tip...
my file started at 2284KB
after step one it reduced to 1556KB
and after step 2 it reduced to 432KB
and after printing it out i did not notice too much difference between the pics....
thanks so much...it'll be a little work to do it to all the files but it'll cut down tremendously on my file sizes...
thanks again...

 

[TheNoocH]

just a follow-up...
what i found worked (at least in my case - and was much faster) was to do the following:
1) copy everything (CTRL-A then CTRL-C)
2) close the file
3) open a new blank file
4) paste (CTRL-V)
5) save

My project went from 24.3MB to 5.33MB (almost an 80% reduction)

gwkenny...thanks for your response and pointing me in the right direction...your tip 3 made me try just copying everything to see how that went...if that didn't do the trick (fortunately it did) i would have dissected it like you suggested....
thanks again

 

[gwkenny]

Thanks!

Always nice to know how things turn out. And learn something to boot